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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



DR. STORK'S WRITINGS. 



HOME SCENES. 

GELZER'S LIFE OF LUTHER, 

Edited with an Introduction. 

CHILDREN OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

JESUS IN THE TEMPLE. 

LUTHER'S CHRISTMAS TREE. 

THE UNSEEN WORLD IN THE LIGHT OF THE 
CROSS. 



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THE 



UNSEEN WORLD 



IN THE 



LIGHT OF THE CROSS. 



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BY T. STORK, D.D. 



He descended into hell. — Creed. 

To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise. — Jesus. 



. 




PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 

187 1. 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., 

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



LIPPINCOTT S PRESS, 
PHILADELPHIA. 



m* gt^te' ml 



I believe in. God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. 

And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, Who was conceived 

by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under 

Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried ; 



I 3%z TrescentreD into i)ell ; I 

the third day He rose from the dead ; 

He ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the 

right hand of God the Father Almighty ; from 

thence He shall come to judge the quick and the 

dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy Catholic 

Church, the Communion of Saints; the Forgiveness of sins; the 

Resurrection of the body ; and the Life everlasting. Amen. 





PREFATORY. 




i|MERSON gives three rules about read- 
ing : " i. Never read any book that is 
not a year old. 2. Never read any but 
famed books. 3. Never read any but what you 
like." Under the first two directories we are 
ruled out utterly ; but there is something of hope 
for us in the third. For, aside from any claim 
to originality of sentiment or novelty of method, 
the theme of our book is in itself attractive and 
of universal interest. We hope, therefore, to get 
a reading from those who, following Emerson's 
rule as well as their own moral instincts, read 
what they like ; or, in Shakspeare's phrase : 

" No profit goes where is no pleasure ta'en : 
In brief, sir, study what you most affect. " 

vii 



Vlll PREFATORY. 

After our manuscript was in type, it was sug- 
gested that John xx. 17 seemed to be at vari- 
ance with a current sentiment of our book. In 
this passage, Christ is reported as saying to 
Mary : ' ' Touch me not ; for I am not yet as- 
cended to my Father: but go to my brethren, 
and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, 
and your Father; and to my God, and youi 
God. M It is intimated that this declaration 
seems to conflict with the sentiment advanced in 
this discussion — that Christ went from the cross 
to Paradise. We avail ourselves of the only op- 
portunity left us, to present a brief expository 
statement of the seeming discrepancy. 

Preliminary to a critical analysis of the pass- 
age, we remark that the ascent to Paradise from 
the cross, with the penitent thief, was rather an 
incidental and illustrative feature of Christ's 
redemptive work than a part of that work itself. 
That ascent from the cross was not at all the 
prophetic ascension of Christ, or the last great 
step of the mediatorial work on earth ; for that 
was an ascension of the whole Christ, in the en- 
tirety of His theanthropic being. Hence, the 
declaration of Christ to Mary, U I am not yet 



PREFATORY. IX 

ascended to my Father, ' ' is not in any way in- 
consistent with a previous and temporary return 
to heaven from the cross* 

A critical exegesis of the passage, however, 
obviates at once the seeming discrepancy sug- 
gested. Bloomfield says, " avapifaxa is regarded 
by the best Commentators as a kind of Preterite- 
Present, q. d. / am not now ascending, i.e., 
going to ascend. The words of the message, 
avafiaiva rfpo$ — fyiwv, would inform them that He 
should stay a short time longer with them on 
earth, and then ascend." According to the best 
authorities the purport of the passage is: "Em- 
brace me not ; let me go ; do not waste the time 
in any demonstrations of affection and respect ; 
you will have an opportunity of showing this 
afterward \ for I am not immediately going to 
take my departure from earth ; but proceed 
directly to my brethren with this comforting 
message, that in a little time I shall ascend to 
heaven, to God my Father, who is also your God 
and your Father. ' ' 

With the hope that our humble effort to catch 
some light from the cross to illumine the fu- 
ture, may guide and cheer the Christian pilgrim 



X PREFATORY. 

on his way to heaven, we commend this little 
work of our heart to 

"Him whose praise I seek; 
Whose frown can disappoint the proudest aim; 
Whose approbation prosper even mine." 





THE APOSTLES' CREED. 

PAGE 

Pope on Creeds — His Universal Prayer — ~ The Ear- 
liest Creed of Christendom — Its Apostolic Au- 
thority — Rufinus — Opinion of the Primitive 
Fathers — The Popular Sentiment since the Re- 
formation — Trinitarian in Its Structure — - Lu- 
ther's Opinion — First Part of the Fifth Article an 
Interpolation — Ought to be Dropped from the 
Creed 19 

II. 
HE DESCENDED INTO HELL. 

This Article the Subject of Controversy — Strong Pre- 
sumptive Evidence against its Right to a Place in 
the Creed — Not Found in the Early Symbols of 
Faith — Not in the Individual Confessions of 



Xll CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Eminent Ecclesiastics of the Early Church — No 
Reference to It before the Fifth Century — Not 
in the Nicene Creed ...... 29 

III. 
ITS BIBLICAL EXEGESIS. 

He Descended into Hell — Nowhere Formally Ex- 
pressed in the Bible — Exposition of Ps. xvi. 10, 
and Acts ii. 31 — An Examination of the Original 
Words — Pivotal Words — David and Peter in 
Accord — Uniform Teaching of the Bible — First 
Sabbath of Redemption . . . . . 41 

IV. 

PREACHING TO THE SPIRITS IN 
PRISON. 

Explanation of Ephes. iv. 9, and Acts ii. 24 — The 
True Exegesis of I Peter iii. 18 — The Usual In- 
terpretation in Conflict with the General Teach- 
ing of the Bible on the Future Condition of the 
Wicked — Augustine's View of the Passage in 
Peter — Who are Meant by the Spirits in Prison ? 
— When did Christ Preach to Them, and howl 53 

V. 

THE CHRISTIAN SYMBOLS. 

How the Descent into Hell was Regarded by Calvin 
and the Reformers — How Stated in the Symbols 



CONTENTS. Xlll 

PAGE 

of the Lutheran Church — Formula of Concord — 
Coloss. ii. 15 Explained — The Bible Nowhere 
Teaches Christ's Literal Descent into Hell — The 
Triumph of Christ over Sin and Death on the 
Cross — Song of Exultation . , . . 65 

VI. 

THE APOSTOLIC FORMULA. 

Dr. Lightfoot's Desire to have this Article according 
to Paul's Statement of the Facts — Many in the 
Church now who Desire this Correction — Tes- 
timony of Christ to the Order of Events in the 
Work of Redemption — Bengel — Paul's State- 
ment of this Part of the Creed — A Plea for the 
Restoration of the Creed to Its Primitive Form. 77 

VII. 
THE UNSEEN WORLD. 

The Future Veiled to Human Sight — Men in All 
Ages Anxious to Look into the Future — The Old 
Question of Job — Christ's Teaching — Parable 
of Dives and Lazarus — Few Details of the Fu- 
ture in the Bible — Tennyson — The Finalities 
of Human Destiny — Light from the Cross on the 
Unseen World 89 



XIV CONTENTS. 

VIII. 

PARADISE. 

PAGE 

Where is Paradise ? — Hades — Intermediate Place — 
Popular Notions about It — Scriptural Meaning 
of Paradise : — Jewish Ideas of It — Paul Caught 
up into Paradise — Paradise in the Scriptures 
means Heaven — Paul — Stephen — John's Vision 
of the Multitude before the Throne . . -103 

IX. 

WITH JESUS. 

Christ Strangely Reticent upon all the Particulars of 
the Future Life — To be with Jesus is the New 
Testament Synonym of Heaven — So in His Most 
Precious Promises — So in Paul's Aspirations, 
and in Universal Christian Experience and Hope 
— Quotation from Watts 127 

X. 

WHEN ? — TO-DAY. 

A Strange Criticism — No Intermediate Place — 
Teaching of the Bible on this Subject — Paul's 
Representations — Grace and Glory — The peni- 
tent Thief went from the Cross to Paradise — 
Second Advent of Jesus 137 



CONTENTS. XV 

XI. 
PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS. 

PAGE 

Hope for Every Penitent and Trusting Soul — The 
Prayer and the Answer — The Wonderful Grace 
of God — The Fountain Still Open — The Invi- 
tation still Heard : " Whosoever Will, Let Him 
Come." 

Cautionary Suggestions. — Danger of Delay — Testi- 
mony of Albert Barnes — Now is the Accepted 
Time. 

The Christian's Death Blessed — Life Hid with Christ 
in God — How Far is it to Heaven ? — But a 
Step between the Christian and Glory . . 155 




THE CREED. 



17 




THE 

UNSEEN WORLD. 



THE CREED. 



"For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight, 
His can't be wrong, whose life is in the right. " 

THIS famous couplet of Pope has 
done a great deal of harm. It is 
plausible, but false. It assumes that if 
a man's life were right, you need not 
care about his creed ; whereas his life, 
according to any true conception of 
moral life, cannot be right, unless in so 
far as it springs from a true faith. So 
in his Universal Prayer he informs us, 

19 



20 THE CREED. 

that it is of little account, whether we 
pray to Jehovah or to Jove, if we only 
pray to the First Cause ; according to 
which philosophy — viewing God only in 
His ontological relation to the world — 
a man may pray as well to gravitation, 
or, what is the same, not pray at all. 
We hope that those who speak against 
creeds will not continue to quote Pope, 
for there is in this familiar and specious 
couplet a latent atheism. We would 
by no means even hint that Pope was 
a skeptic ; on the contrary, he was a 
believer in the doctrines enjoined by 
his own church, and enforced by social 
respectability. And he is an instance 
of people, who are unawares moulded 
religiously by the very creeds they con- 
demn : for we may see in his own 
Eloisa, and in the dread conflicts of her 
tempestuous. soul, how profoundly Pope 



THE CREED. 21 

also had drunk from the streams of 
Christian sentiment, that have come 
down to us through the earlier con- 
fessions of the Church. Pope, though 
a very imperfect Christian, was uncon- 
sciously touched by the early Christian 
types of purity, as is evident from the 
sentiment in the familiar hymn : 

6 ' Hark ! the herald-angels say, 
Sister Spirit, come away." 

The earliest, as well as the most 
Catholic creed of Christendom is the 
so-called Apostles' Creed, which grew 
gradually out of the Confession of 
Peter and the baptismal formula. Ru- 
finus, near the close of the fourth cen- 
tury, contended that this Symbolum 
Apostolicum was of Apostolic author- 
ship. From the etymology of the 
word sumbolon, he maintained that the 



2 2 THE CREED. 

creed was constructed out of material 
contributed by each one of the Apos- 
tles : " Sumbolon oti ekastos sunebale" 
But it is evident that the Confession 
was not so regarded by the Primitive 
Fathers, for they quote from it with 
minor variations and omissions, with a 
freedom utterly inconsistent with their 
recognition of the creed as of inspired 
authority. Since the Reformation, the 
view of Rufinus, that this symbol is 
the formal and verbal production of 
the Apostles, has been almost uni- 
versally discarded, whilst, at the same 
time, it is as universally received as 
Apostolic in the sense of harmoniz- 
ing with the Apostles' teaching, and 
has been adopted more generally than 
any other single confession of faith, by 
all Christian denominations, and forms 
indeed to this day the bond of unity for 



THE CREED. 23 

the Greek, the Roman, and the Evan- 
gelical branches of the Church. 

It is in its doctrinal structure trini- 
tarian and Christo-centric. "It follows, ,, 
says Dr. Schaff, "the historical order of 
the revelation of the triune God, the 
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ; 
and brings together, in the most simple 
and intelligible language, the leading 
facts of this revelation, from the crea- 
tion of the world to the life everlasting, 
as so many articles of faith and acts of 
confession in a grand liturgical epic for 
the edification of the Church." Luther, 
in the " Kirchenpostille, ,, as quoted by 
Dr. Shedd, says, in his peculiar way : 
" This confession of faith we did not 
make or invent, nor did the fathers be- 
fore us; but as a bee collects honey 
from the beautiful and fragrant flowers 
of all sorts, so is this symbol briefly and 



24 THE CREED. 

accurately put together out of the books 
of the prophets and Apostles, i. e. out 
of the whole sacred Scripture, for chil- 
dren and simple-hearted Christians. It 
is called the Apostles' Symbol, or Con- 
fession, because Christian truth could 
not possibly be put into a shorter and 
clearer statement than this. And as it 
has been in the Church from the begin- 
ning, it was either composed by the 
Apostles themselves, or else brought 
together from their writings or preach- 
ing, by some of their best pupils. ,, 

A recent writer has called attention 
to the first part of the Fifth Article of 
the Creed: "He descended into hell!' In 
his effort to vindicate the Article and 
maintain its claim to a place in the 
Confession, he has displayed his usual 
tact and ability in handling polemical 
questions. But the positions assumed 



THE CREED. 25 

we regard as utterly indefensible on 
Scriptural grounds. 

"He descended into hell" has always 
been a hard place to get over in our use 
of the Creed. Whenever we came to 
it, we experienced a sort of eddy in the 
current of our emotions, and a faltering 
hesitancy in our utterance. It has al- 
ways been to us a harsh and discordant 
note in the otherwise musical Confession. 
Our first repugnance to the phrase, it 
may be, was mainly aesthetical, but sub- 
sequent investigation has not only veri- 
fied our moral instincts, but confirmed 
us in the conviction, that the phrase, 
"He descended into hell" is a fraudulent 
interpolation, and does not belong legi- 
timately to the Creed. Its place in the 
Confession, with its current interpreta- 
tion, is utterly indefensible on either 
historical or biblical grounds. This we 
3 



26 THE CREED. 

shall undertake to show in the present 
discussion. 

Meanwhile it is our hope that at no 
distant day, the Church will not only- 
drop from the Creed the offensive phrase 
as it now stands, but also the several 
expletives, or synonymized substitutes, 
such as " Hades," " Place of departed 
Spirits;" for the whole thing — the 
sentence and its milder synonyms, in 
form and sentiment — is a spurious in- 
terjection of Romanism that should be 
discarded by Protestants. And because 
we love this Creed, we hope to see it 
drop this offensive phrase, which mars 
its beauty and disturbs its musical har- 
mony. Because we love it and use it, 
we will plead with our ecclesiastical 
Councils to exscind this offensive ex- 
crescence, and restore the Creed of 
Protestant Christendom to its primitive 
integrity and Apostolic consistency. 



II. 

" HE DESCENDED INTO HELL"— 

ITS HISTORICAL RELATIONS. 



27 




II. 



" HE DESCENDED INTO HELL ITS HIS- 
TORICAL RELATIONS TO THE CREED. 

THE fact that this article has been 
the subject of such divergent 
opinions and fanciful speculations, is in 
itself a strong presumption against the 
validity of its claim to a place in the 
Creed. And while the people from 
Sabbath to Sabbath repeat the sentence, 
as a part of their Christian faith, there 
is not one in ten who has any defined 
conception of what he really does be- 
lieve in the expression. In most cases 
it is little more than a syllabic utterance, 

3* 29 



30 HE DESCENDED INTO HELL: 

an unmeaning babbling, or a mystic 
dreaming. 

Repudiating the Romish sentiment 
adopted from St. Ambrose, the pious 
but fanciful Bishop of Milan, that the 
Creed was composed by the Apostles, 
we feel free to question any dogma 
of the Confession which we honestly 
believe to be inconsonant with the 
teaching of the Divine Word. Especially 
is this our privilege concerning an article 
which it is believed has been furtively 
introduced into the Creed, and which, 
if history is at all reliable, must be re- 
garded as a spurious interpolation. We 
assume, therefore, in the outset, that the 
sentence — "He descended into hell" — 
does not belong historically to the 
Creed, and that the theological idea 
which it is commonly understood to ex- 
press is not contained in the Word of 



ITS HISTORICAL RELATIONS. 31 

God. These two points we shall en- 
deavor to establish by showing : — i. The 
historical relations of this article to the 
Creed ; and, 2. That there is not a single 
passage in the Bible which, fairly inter- 
preted, teaches the literal, local descent 
of Christ into hell. Accordingly we in - 
vite attention : 

1. To the historical relations of this 
article to the Creed. The presumptive 
evidence against the authenticity of this 
article as a part of the Apostles' Creed, 
is cumulative and absolutely conclusive. 
Even Calvin, who believed the article 
necessary to a complete summary of 
faith, is compelled to admit, that it was 
not always in common use in the 
churches. {Institutes, B. II. ch. 16.) 
It is a significant fact that Polycarp, 
Clemens Romanus, and Justin Martyn, 
omitted this article. It may be said, to 



32 HE DESCENDED INTO HELL: 

be sure, that these Fathers did not pre- 
tend to give the Creed of their times, 
but the omission shows that it was not 
the current sentiment of the Church of 
their day. But what is still more to the 
point, this article is not found in the 
summaries of the Christian faith given 
by Iren^us and Tertulli an. Notwith- 
standing their coincidence with the 
Apostles' Creed, there are such varia- 
tions as indicate their separate origin, 
and that they were no mere transcripts 
of the Apostolic symbol. And yet in 
these early and important symbols of 
faith there is no allusion to the descent 
into hell, or any synonym expressive of 
that sentiment. In Irenseus we have 
simply an allusion to Christ's "passion 
and resurrection from the dead." In Ter- 
tullian we have that part of the Creed 
thus : " And in his Son Jesus Christ, 



ITS HISTORICAL RELATIONS. 33 

born of the Virgin Mary, crucified un- 
der Pontius Pilate, raised from the dead 
on the third day." 

Nor is this article mentioned in the 
individual confessions of eminent eccle- 
siastics of the early Church. It is not 
in the Creed of St. Basil ; nor in the 
confessions of Epiphanius, Gelasius, and 
Macarius. It is not in the Creed ex- 
pounded by St. Cyril ; nor in the sym- 
bol explained by St. Augustin, De Fide 
et Symbola. It is not in the Creed of 
the Church of Antioch, delivered by 
Cassianus ; nor in the MS. Creeds set 
forth by the learned Archbishop of 
Armagh. 

But the evidence against this article 
accumulates, as we follow the historical 
development of symbolic literature. 
There is no reference to the article as 
a part of the creed of Christians, until 



34 HE DESCENDED INTO HELL: 

Rufinus, in the beginning of the fifth 
century. He says the article of the de- 
scent into hell was not in the symbol of 
the Church of Rome, nor in the symbols 
of any of the Oriental churches before 
his day. He tells us that he found it in 
his church at Aquileia, but that the Ro- 
man and Eastern churches had only the 
burial, and he thought that the two 
meant the same thing, — one, perhaps, 
being explanatory of the other, if not a 
mere expletive. No mention is made 
of this article, in the Romish sense, by 
any of the Fathers or Councils of the 
Church for four hundred years after 
Christ. Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement 
and Origen, Ambrose and Augustine 
— though believing in an intermediate 
state into which our Lord descended — 
seem to have been utterly ignorant of 
any copy of the Apostles' Creed, :on- 



ITS HISTORICAL RELATIONS. 35 

taining the words " He descended into 
hell." And then, the article is not ex- 
pressed in those creeds, which were 
made by the councils as expositions of 
the Apostles' Creed. In the Nicene 
(A. D. 325) we read : " He suffered and 
was buried, and the third day he rose 
again;" in that vulgarly attributed to 
Athanasius (A. D. 333) we read : "Who 
suffered for our salvation, descended 
into hell, rose again the third day from 
the dead ; " from which comparison it 
would seem that the two phrases were 
then thought to be synonymous. So it 
seems to have been regarded in the old 
creeds in which the phrase occurs. The 
creeds that contain " He descended into 
hell," omit " he was buried," and so con- 
versely ; so that we are ready to accept 
the fact announced by Vossius, that — - 
"The churches of the East originally 



36 HE DESCENDED INTO HELL: 

understood by Christ's descent into hell, 
just what the churches of the West 
called his burial." 

From these historical facts it is evi- 
dent that the descent into hell is not 
found as a separate, distinct article in 
any of the earlier creeds ; that it is 
not in any copy or draught of the Apos- 
tles' Creed in use in the Eastern or the 
Roman churches for at least four hun- 
dred years after Christ ; that it is not 
in the Nicene Creed adopted in A. D. 
325 ; and that it was used in the Atha- 
nasian as synonymous with burial. We 
are therefore justified in the conclusion, 
that the article — "He descended into 
hell" — does not belong legitimately to 
the Apostles' Creed; and that it is a 
spurious interpolation by heretics to 
support the doctrine of purgatory, and 
kindred follies. The article is in the 



ITS HISTORICAL RELATIONS. 2>7 

Creed of the Church of Rome now. 
That Church teaches that Christ de- 
scended literally and locally to hell, at 
least to that part called Limbus Patrum, 
supposed to be on the confines of the 
place of torment. Though the doctrine 
was in the Church of Rome at an earlier 
date, it was not formally announced 
until the Council of Florence in 1439. . 




III. 

" HE DESCENDED INTO HELL"- 

ITS BIBLICAL EXEGESIS. 



39 




III. 

"HE DESCENDED INTO HELL " ITS 

BIBLICAL EXEGESIS. 

THE words of the article as they 
lie in the Creed are nowhere for- 
mally expressed in the Bible, but there 
are passages which it is alleged teach 
the local descent of Christ into hell, 
and inferentially necessitate the peculiar 
phraseology of the confession. For the 
present we confine our examination to 
Ps. xvi. 10: "For thou wilt not leave 
my soul in hell ; neither wilt thou suffer 
thine holy one to see corruption ; " and 

Acts ii. 31— where Peter, quoting the 

4* 41 



42 HE DESCENDED INTO HELL. 

passage in the Psalms, says, that David 
being a prophet spake this of the re- 
surrection of Christ — "that his soul 
was not left in hell, neither his flesh did 
see corruption/' Now David and Peter 
in saying that our Lord was not left in 
hell, seem to indicate of necessity that 
he had been there. It is mainly from 
these passages that the article is vin- 
dicated, as Scriptural in sentiment and 
expression. 

Luther has a very summary way of 
disposing of the subject. He says — 
" It is enough for us to know that Christ 
descended into hell, ,, &c. But unfor- 
tunately for some of us, we do not know 
any such thing. He says, "We should 
not bewilder ourselves about the man- 
ner in which it is effected." Exactly so; 
we do not care about the manner, but 
our trouble is with the fact itself. And 



ITS BIBLICAL EXEGESIS. 43 

as the fact is founded almost exclusively 
on the passage just quoted, it becomes 
purely a question of sacred hermeneutics, 
to be determined upon fair exegetical 
principles ; a philological analysis of the 
terms employed by David and Peter, 
and the usus loquendi of the sacred 
writers. 

We regret the necessity of referring to 
the original words, for it is so common 
for men of little Greek and less Hebrew 
to make such shows of learning, that it 
looks pedantic, and often is so. But we 
must somehow get at the true meaning 
of the pivotal words in the article, and 
in the passages upon which it is founded. 
And in doing this — without any pre- 
tension to linguistics — we simply use 
the lexicons, and consult the highest 
authorities in exegetical philology, and 
make no claim for ourselves of learning 



44 HE DESCENDED INTO HELL. 

or originality. "Thou wilt not leave 
my soul in hell. ,> Everything in this 
passage, in its relation to this article in 
the Creed, turns upon the words — soul 
and hell. 

Take the word hell. The Hebrew and 
Greek originals have each two words of 
different meaning, to render which our 
translators had but the one word, hell. 
The Hebrew has gehenna and sheol : 
gehenna meaning the place of the wicked 
m torment ; sheol meaning generally the 
place of the dead, or the grave. We 
will not give Scriptural citations to prove 
what no biblical scholar will question. 
In the Psalm, David does not use ge- 
henna — the place of punishment; but 
sheol — the place of the dead, or the 
grave. " Thou wilt not leave my soul 
in sheol" — the state of the dead, or the 
grave. In the New Testament, gehenna 



ITS BIBLICAL EXEGESIS. 45 

is adopted from the Hebrew, and is used 
to signify the place of future punish- 
ment ; but whenever the state or place 
of the dead is simply referred to, the 
word hades is used, as equivalent to 
sheoL In conformity to this usage, Peter, 
in his quotation of the Psalm, employs 
hades — the state of the dead, or the 
grave. Neither the psalmist nor the 
apostle says that Christ was in the place 
of punishment, but the contrary; "as 
otherwise the reasoning of Peter would 
be that David had gone to torment and 
is there still,— a conclusion from which 
every one would shrink. " For any one 
in the face of these philological facts to 
say that the passage proves Christ's 
descent into hell, is to charge David and 
Peter with the want of common intelli- 
gence in the use of words to express 
their ideas, and is wholly inadmissible, 



46 HE DESCENDED INTO HELL. 

in any true conception of their inspira- 
tion. 

The other word to be considered is 
soul. The Hebrew word nephesh, does 
not commonly, nor even radically mean 
what we understand by soul — the spi- 
ritual, moral part of man. Its primary 
sense is breath, or the life, whether of 
man or beast. Sometimes, indeed, it 
means a corpse or exanimate body, as 
Haggai ii. 13: "If one that is unclean 
by a dead body" — nephesh. So also in 
Numbers vi. 6: "He shall come at no 
dead body " — nephesh. We might there- 
fore consistently render the verse in the 
Psalms, " Thou wilt not leave my body 
in the grave." Mostly, however, nephesh 
is used as the word perso7t by us; as 
when we say, not a soul on the ship 
was lost, or not a person was present. 
It is a common Orientalism for the per- 



ITS BIBLICAL EXEGESIS. 47 

sonal pronouns ; so that it would be 
perfectly proper to read : " Thou wilt 
not leave me in the state of the dead." 
Either of these renderings would be 
justified by that peculiarity of Hebrew 
poetry called parallelism, which repeats 
in the second, with some difference of 
phrase, the idea of the first line. "Thou 
wilt not leave me, or my person, or my 
body in the grave ; nor wilt thou suffer 
thy Holy One to see corruption. " 

Peter evidently understood nephesh 
in this sense, for he uses as the corre- 
sponding Greek word, psuche, which is 
the equivalent for the Hebrew term, 
for life, especially in the sense of person. 
This is the common habit of language. 
In the Old Testament we have the fa- 
miliar passage — " Let me die the death 
of the righteous ; " in the Hebrew it is 
the same as in the Psalm quoted — 



4§ HE DESCENDED INTO HELL. 

nephesh — Let my soul, or me, die. So 
in the New Testament the Greek equiv- 
alent is used, meaning the body, and 
the body and the soul, the person. Now 
from this collation of David with Peter, 
and the common use of language in the 
Old and New Testament, we are author- 
ized to render the passage thus: "Thou 
wilt not leave my soul" — Me — my per- 
son, my humanity, — body and reason- 
able soul, under the power of death in 
the grave. " Neither wilt thou suffer 
thine Holy One%ME — myself — a to 
see corruption/' Believers in general 
are saved from the perpetual dominion 
of death, but Christ was saved from the 
first touch of corruption. 

According to this interpretation, ac- 
cepted by nearly all biblical scholars, 
and demanded by the "analogy of 
faith," the Psalmist and the Apostle, so 



ITS BIBLICAL EXEGESIS. 49 

far from teaching Christ's local descent 
into hell, teach most distinctly just the 
contrary. They simply affirm that our 
Lord died and was buried — that his 
soul returned to God the Father, and 
his body was laid in the tomb. 

This meaning, as will appear more 
fully hereafter, is in harmony with 
the concurrent testimony of the Scrip- 
tures, touching Christ's death, burial, 
and resurrection. And in this view, 
how, from the darkness and mystery 
that hung round the cross, there opens 
up through the impending gloom the 
golden gate of Heaven ! As he com- 
mended his departing spirit into the 
hands of the Father, he went up from 
the cross to God in heaven, and received 
in Paradise that day, the redeemed peni- 
tent who hung by his side on Calvary. 
" The next day being the Sabbath, the 



5° HE DESCENDED INTO HELL. 

second Adam rested with God, after 
accomplishing the new creation, as the 
first Adam rested with him, after the 
former creation, in paradise." After 
the rest of the Sabbath, he descended 
on the morning of the first day of the 
week, from heaven into sheol, or the 
grave, or the state of the dead, not to 
be under the power of death, but to 
take up his dead body and come forth 
as the Conqueror of sin and death and 
the grave. 

" Now empty are the courts of death, 
And crushed thy sting, Despair ; 
And roses bloom in the desert tomb, 
For Jesus hath been there. " 




IV. 

CHRIST PREACHING TO THE 
SPIRITS IN PRISON. 



si 




IV. 

CHRIST PREACHING TO THE SPIRITS IN 
PRISON. 



SOME of the ancient Fathers under- 
stood the text in Ephesians iv. 9 : 
" Now that he ascended, what is it but 
that he also descended first into the 
lower parts of the earth?" as teaching 
the descent into hell. Bishop Pearson 
suggests, that " lower parts of the earth" 
may refer to the incarnation, according 
to the 139th Psalm: " My substance was 
not hid from thee, when I was made in 
secret, and curiously wrought in the 

5* 53 



54 CHRIST PREACHING TO THE 

lower parts of the earth ; " or to the 
burial of Christ, according to the 63d 
Psalm : " Those that seek my soul to 
destroy it, shall go into the lower parts 
of the earth." Without dwelling upon 
this passage, we think what Paul says 
about this contrast in Philippians ought 
to be an adequate exposition of what 
he means here: "And being found in 
fashion as a man, he humbled himself, 
and became obedient unto death, even 
the death of the cross. Wherefore 
God also hath highly exalted him," &c. 
When Paul, therefore, asserts that our 
Lord "descended into the lower parts 
of the earth," he simply, according to 
his Hebraistic style of speaking, means 
to describe the extreme humiliation of 
Christ for us, in the incarnation, in his 
lowly life and shameful death. It was 
from this lowest depth of human igno- 



SPIRITS IN PRISON. 55 

miny he went up with his cross-scarred, 
and once buried body, to the highest 
glory of heaven. 

The text in Acts ii. 24, "Whom God 
hath raised up loosing the pains of hell, ,, 
contains nothing in favor of the descent, 
inasmuch as the passage, according to 
the original and authentic Greek, reads 
thus : whom God hath raised up loosing 
the pains of death. 

The passage in 1 Peter iii. 18, 19, 
quoted to prove that our Lord went, 
after his death, and preached to the lost 
in perdition, does not, according to any 
admissible theory of exegesis, prove any 
such thing. It is thus: "For Christ, 
also, hath once suffered for sins, the 
just for the unjust, that he might bring 
us to God, being put to death in the 
flesh, but quickened by the Spirit : By 
which, also, he went and preached unto 



56 CHRIST PREACHING TO THE 

the spirits in prison : Which sometime 
were disobedient, when once the long- 
suffering of God waited in the days of 
Noah, while the ark was a-preparing, 
wherein few, that is eight souls, were 
saved by water." The Church of Eng- 
land, by an act of the Synod of Edward 
VI., claims this passage as authority for 
believing in the literal descent, as ex- 
pressed in the Creed ; and some of the 
ancient Fathers, and we are sorry to 
say, a few of the modern, concur in this 
interpretation. 

There are many strong presumptive 
reasons against such an interpretation, 
prior to any critical examination of the 
text. For instance, it is wholly irrele- 
vant to the aim and scope of the Apostle 
in his exhortation to Christians in the 
passage to maintain patience and stead- 
fastness under calumny and persecution ; 



SPIRITS IN PRISON. 57 

it is utterly inconsonant with the con- 
current testimony of Scripture against 
any hope of redemption from the world 
of perdition, and the emphatic teaching 
of the Bible, that in this life only is 
there any availability of the Gospel to 
the sinner. It is opposed to the con- 
viction inspired by the teaching of Christ 
himself, that if men hear not Moses and 
the prophets, neither would they be 
persuaded though one rose from the 
dead ; so that if men resist the Gospel 
here and perish, there is no hope for 
them in the future : 

" Though God should stoop, 
Inviting still, and send his Only Son 
To offer grace in hell, the pride that first 
Refused, would still refuse. ' ' 

In fact, the difficulties which environ 
this explanation are so many, and com- 
plex, and insuperable, that even Au- 



58 CHRIST PREACHING TO THE 

gustine, who believed in this article of 
the Creed, was forced to concede that 
the words of Peter in this passage had 
no reference to the doctrine of Christ's 
descent into hell. And the illustrious 
Calmet, a Roman Catholic, a believer 
in purgatory, was compelled to admit, 
that this text does not teach the doc- 
trine of Christ's preaching the Gospel 
in Limbus Patrum. 

Coming to this passage, so far as 
possible, unbiassed by these antecedent 
prejudices, and with an honest exami- 
nation of the text, according to the com- 
mon principles of biblical exegesis, we 
remark : 

i . That this passage, in order to prove 
that Christ descended into hell, must 
assert, that the spirit here spoken of is 
the soul of Christ, and that the preaching 
referred to by the Apostle was after his 



SPIRITS IN PRISON. 59 

death, and before his resurrection. But 
neither of these conditions is possible ; 
because neither is, even by implication, 
in the text. In confirmation of this, and 
as expositive of the true meaning of 
Peter, we present briefly the following 
exegetical analysis of the passage : 

2. "By which, also, he went and 
pi'eached" In the preceding verse we 
have, " being put to death in the flesh, 
but quickened by the spirit." By which 
spirit he went and preached. What 
Spirit ? Evidently, not the soul of Christ, 
but the Spirit, by which he was quick- 
ened, that is the power of the Divinity, ac- 
cording to Paul in Corinthians ; " though 
he was crucified through weakness, yet 
he liveth by the power of God." Bishop 
Pearson quotes this very passage of 
Peter under discussion to prove the pre- 
existence of Christ, and says : " From 



60 CHRIST PREACHING TO THE 

which words it appeareth that Christ 
preached by the same spirit, by the 
virtue of which he was raised from the 
dead ; but that spirit was not his soul, 
but something of a greater power — the 
power of his Divinity." He maintains, 
that, as the Son of God, he preached to 
the ante-diluvians, through the instru- 
mentality of Noah, who is called a 
preacher of righteousness ; just as he 
preached to the people of Jerusalem 
and Judaea, through the Apostles ; and 
just as he now preaches to men by his 
ministers. 

3. "Spirits in prison!' Peter tells us 
they were those who lived in the time 
of Noah, and were disobedient to the 
calls of that preacher of righteousness, 
and perished for their disobedience, 
and at the time of his writing were 
spirits in prison, reserved like the fallen 



SPIRITS IN PRISON. 6l 

angels unto judgment. These two 
points determined, settle the time of 
this preaching. Christ did preach to 
the spirits in prison, but not when they 
were in prison, neither did Jae go, per- 
sonally, after his death, to preach to 
them, but when they were living on 
earth, at the time the ark was prepar- 
ing. Then it was that He preached to 
them through Noah, and for the neglect 
of whose warnings they were drowned, 
and cast into the prison of despair, 
where they have been ever since, as 
they were at the time of Peter. 

This is a fair and natural exposition 
of Peter, and accords with the design 
of the Apostle in the enforcement of 
patience and steadfastness under cal- 
umny and persecution. This interpre- 
tation connects and harmonizes the 

several parts of the passage, from the 
6 



62 CHRIST PRE A CHING. 

1 4th verse to the end ; while the other 
view disjoints the several parts of the 
passage, and leaves them incoherent, 
without meaning or affinity ; for what 
fitness is there between Christian stead- 
fastness, which is the Apostle's theme, 
and Christ's preaching to souls in pur- 
gatory ? 





V. 
THE DESCENT INTO HELL, 

AND THE CHRISTIAN SYMBOLS. 



63 




V. 

THE DESCENT INTO HELL, AND THE 
CHRISTIAN SYMBOLS. 

CALVIN, and the Reformers gen- 
erally, retained the article, but 
rejected the Romish interpretation, and 
understood it in a spiritual sense, in 
harmony, as they conceived, with the 
Word of God. 

In the Symbols of the Lutheran 
Church the article is retained in the 
sense of Luther, as expressed in a ser- 
mon at Torgau, A. D. 1533. That in- 
terpretation, which appears in the For- 

6* E 65 



66 THE CHRISTIAN SYMBOLS. 

mula of Concord, must be regarded as 
the Lutheran view, and is as follows : 
"We, therefore, in simplicity, believe 
that the whole person, God and man, 
after his burial, descended into hell, and 
destroyed its power, conquered the 
devil, and took away all his power." 

The article, in this sense, is least ob- 
noxious to Protestant sentiment, inas- 
much as it leaves nothing to favor the 
Romish dogma of purgatory ; is not in 
conflict with the uniform testimony of 
the Scriptures limiting the offers of sal- 
vation to this life ; and does not, there- 
fore, implicate Peter in the absurdity 
of teaching, that Christ went to the 
ante-diluvian sinners, who, for their ob- 
stinate unbelief and persistent wicked- 
ness, perished in the days of Noah, with 
special and exclusive messages of sal- 
vation in their world of doom. But, 



THE CHRISTIAN SYMB OLS. 6/ 

unobjectionable as the article is in these 
aspects, it is, nevertheless, inadmissible 
on the ground that such descent of 
Christ is without any Scriptural basis ; 
and what in our symbols is predicated 
of such descent is in conflict with the 
most explicit affirmations of the Bible. 
It is very well for Luther and the For- 
mula of Concord, to dehort us from 
undue fastidiousness about the manner 
of the descent, and urge us to adhere 
to the word of God, and simply to be- 
lieve the fact. Now, our trouble is not 
at all with the mode of the descent but 
with the fact. Let us have a clear, 
biblical declaration of the fact, and we 
can easily leave the rationale of the 
descent with the mysteries of the Tri- 
nity and the Incarnation. 

The Formula of Concord, quoting 
Luther, tells us: "It ought to be suffi- 



68 THE CHR IS TIA N S YMB O L S. 

cient for us to know, that Christ de- 
scended into hell, and abolished it for 
all believers, by delivering them from 
the power of death and the devil." But 
how are we to know this ? It is useless 
to urge us so dogmatically to know and 
believe what we are unable to find in 
the Bible, and what seems to us incon- 
sistent with the most explicit statements 
of the word of God. This whole theory, 
so far as we can see, has not a single 
clear, unquestionable text of the Bible 
on which to stand. We have yet to 
find a passage which unmistakably as- 
serts that Christ descended literally and 
locally to hell, to triumph there over 
death and the devil. It is a glorious 
fact that Christ did triumph over death 
and the powers of darkness, but it is no- 
where ascribed to his descent to hell, 
but to his death and ascension. 



THE CHR IS TIA N S YMB O L S. 69 

In Hebrews ii. 14, Paul says, "That 
through death He might destroy him 
that had the power of death, that is, 
the devil." 

Colossians ii. 15, "And having spoiled 
principalities and powers, he made a 
show of them, openly triumphing over 
them in it" — i. e. in the cross, which is 
the antecedent to which "it" belongs. 
The triumph over principalities and 
powers is here ascribed to Christ on 
the cross. If, according to Rosenmuller, 
we read, triumphing over them in him- 
self, the sense is essentially the same, 
as Christ was still on the cross when 
the triumph was achieved. Bishop 
Pearson says that the ancient Fathers 
of the Greek Church read the text ac- 
cording to our version, triumphing over 
them in it, and interpreted the triumph 
as achieved by his death ; while others 



JO THE CHR IS TIA N S YMB O L S. 

of the Latin Church, who adopted a dif- 
ferent rendering, nevertheless concurred 
with the Greeks in "making the cross 
not only the place in which the victory 
over Satan was obtained, but also the 
trophy of that victory, and the triumphal 
chariot/' Evidently there is nothing in 
this passage to favor the doctrine of 
Christ's descent into hell, to triumph 
over death and the devil there. The 
fact is, Paul gives most distinctly an 
altogether different cause and locality 
to these glorious achievements. 

Nor is the sense affected by a colla- 
tion of this text with the passage in 
Ephesians — " When he ascended up on 
high, he led captivity captive." It is 
not said, when he had led captivity cap- 
tive he ascended on high, but ascending 
(or having ascended- — Bloomfield) up 
on high, he led captivity captive ; and 



THE CHRISTIAN SYMBOLS. 7 1 

consequently, that triumphant act was 
the immediate effect of his ascension. 
"So that by these two Scriptures no 
more can be proved than this, that 
Christ triumphed over principalities and 
powers at his death upon the cross, and 
led captivity captive at his ascension 
into heaven, which is so far from prov- 
ing that Christ descended into hell to 
triumph there, that it is more proper to 
persuade the contrary." 

We must accept this unquestionable 
testimony of the Bible, against every 
mere human theory, however imposing 
and dogmatic. The Formula of Con- 
cord says — " Christ descended into hell 
and destroyed its power and conquered 
the devil ; " but this triumph is every- 
where in the Scriptures ascribed to the 
death of Christ — not to his descending 
into hell ; but to His Cross and resur- 



7 2 THE CHRISTIAN SYMBOLS, 

rection from the dead. There is not a 
single passage in the Bible that tells us 
that Christ descended into hell to tri- 
umph there over the devil. His glori- 
ous achievements are ascribed, not to 
his descent into hell, but to his death 
and resurrection. According to Paul, 
the spoiling of principalities and powers 
was on Calvary, and " the making a 
public show" of his trophies was on 
the cross and at the empty tomb. His 
triumphal arch is over Calvary, not in 
hell. His triumphal procession is not 
through the gloomy regions of the lost; 
but from the vanquished grave and the 
Mount of Ascension. And the church 
on earth, like the wondering disciples 
at the mount, lifts her face all glowing 
with hope to her ascending and ascended 
Lord, and exclaims with the transport 
of triumphant song : 



THE CHR IS TIA N S YMB OLS. ] 

" Say : Live forever, wondrous King ! 
Born to redeem and strong to save ! 
Then ask the monster : Where's thy sting? 
And where's thy vict'ry, boasting grave? ' 





VI. 

RESTORATION OF THE FIFTH 

ARTICLE TO THE APOSTOLIC 

FORMULA. 



75 




VI. 



RESTORATION OF THE FIFTH ARTICLE TO 
THE APOSTOLIC FORMULA. 

WE disclaim all affinity with But- 
ler's "errant saints" described 
by the satirist as restless for change, 
ever doing but never done. 

We do not belong to this sect. We 
would not mar with a sacrilegious touch 
anything really apostolic in this noble 
Confession. What we desire is simply 
the excision of what is the outgrowth of 
error and superstition, and the restora- 
tion of the Creed to its normal condition 

and Scriptural consistency. 

7* 77 



78 THE APOSTOLIC FORMULA. 

We are not alone in this desired 
emendation of the Creed. Dr. Light- 
foot, of renowned scholarship, long 
since expressed a similar feeling. He 
says : " There is not an article in our 
Christian faith that still hath more need 
of explication to bring it to common 
reason than this one." A distinguished 
author in the Presbyterian Church has 
recently entered his protest against this 
article as unbiblical. There are those 
in our own church who do not recognize 
this article as apostolic, and who are 
anxious for such emendations as shall 
restore the Creed to its primeval integ- 
rity and consistency. And such emen- 
dation requires the omission not only 
of " He descended into hell," but the 
modern substitutes of " Hades," or 
"the world of departed spirits." For 
these synonymized substitutes, w T hilst 



THE APOSTOLIC FORMULA. 79 

they are less offensive to the ear, have 
no intelligible meaning, and are lost in 
the mists of speculation. They are in 
some respects more objectionable than 
the article as it now stands, for that has 
a defined moral idea, and can claim high 
confessional authority ; whilst the sub- 
stitutes are without any defined positive 
theological idea, and have no authority 
either divine or human. For of all theo- 
ries of the future world the most unde- 
fined and nebulous is that of an inter- 
mediate place which is neither heaven 
nor hell. 

All the emendation asked is simply 
the omission of the first part of the fifth 
article ; so that the Creed shall read 
thus: "was crucified, dead, and buried; 
the third day he rose again from the 
dead." 

This is all that belongs to that part 



80 THE APOSTOLIC FORMULA. 

of the Creed in its normal condition ; 
for the unscriptural and offensive sen- 
tence was not in the Apostles' Creed, 
nor in any known Christian confession 
for four hundred years after Christ. 
From our previous examinations, we 
think it must be evident that the local 
descent of Christ into hell is not taught 
in a single passage of the Bible. And 
what ought to be final and conclusive 
to every candid inquirer after truth, is 
the fact, that this interpolated article is 
in direct conflict with Christ's own inter- 
pretation of the Messianic prophecies 
touching his passion, death, and resur- 
rection, as well as opposed to the se- 
quence of these events as given by the 
inspired Apostle. 

i. Christ in expounding to the twelve 
the prophetic declarations concerning 
his death, says : " And they shall scourge 



THE APOSTOLIC FORMULA, 51 

him, and put him to death; and the 
third day he shall rise again." This is 
substantially the record of Matthew, 
Mark, and Luke. Now, if between his 
death and resurrection there was a lit- 
eral descent into hell for any purpose 
whatever, as a part of the great media- 
torial work, is it possible that such an 
important fact should be overlooked, 
and dropped in silence from the sacred 
record? The bare hypothesis is absurd. 
In conformity with this prophetic se- 
quence of events, we have this remark- 
able prayer of Christ on the cross : 
" Father, into thy hands I commend my 
spirit; and having said thus, he gave up 
the Ghost." Bengel, on this passage, 
says : " The Father received the spirit 
of Jesus, as Jesus receives the spirits 
of believers. Parathasomai — I will com- 
mend in the very act. As a deposit 

F 



82 THE APOSTOLIC FORMULA. 

committed to him at death." As Christ 
commended his departing spirit into 
the hands of his Father, and promised 
to take the penitent thief the same day 
into paradise, we believe that the soul 
of our Lord did go immediately to God 
the Father in heaven. No biblical 
scholar will contend that the paradise 
promised the penitent thief was some 
other place than heaven. The word 
occurs in only two other places in the 
New Testament. It occurs in Paul's 
account of his rapture, when "he was 
caught up into paradise ; where he 
heard unspeakable words." No one 
can question its meaning here. Always 
in the Scriptures, men are sajd to go 
down into Skeol> or Hades, as in the 
Creed: "He descended mto hell;" but 
Paul was "caught up into paradise;" 
went there in the same direction — up- 



THE APOSTOLIC FORMULA. 83 

ward — that he went to the third heaven. 
The only remaining passage in which 
the word occurs is in Rev. ii. 7 : " To 
him that overcometh will I give to eat 
of the tree of life, which is in the midst 
of the paradise of God." Now, where 
the tree of life is, there is paradise ; but 
in the 2 2d chapter of Revelation, we 
are told that the tree of life is beside 
the river of the water of life, proceed- 
ing out of the throne of God and the 
Lamb; therefore, paradise is near the 
throne of God and the Lamb, and that 
is the highest heaven, the place of final 
blessedness. It was there John saw a 
countless multitude of every kindred 
and people, clothed with white robes 
and palms in their hands, and singing, 
" Salvation unto our God who sitteth 
upon the throne, and unto the Lamb." 
Paradise is heaven. It is perfectly nat- 



84 THE APOSTOLIC FORMULA. 

ural that the restoration of man to 
final blessedness should be described 
by the images of the first paradise. 
Accordingly, Christ went from the cross 
to heaven, and took with him the peni- 
tent that hung by his side on Calvary. 

2. Paul, in i Cor. xv. 1-4, gives not 
only the great events of Christ's death 
and resurrection, but their historical 
consecutions. And, surely, in a creed 
which claims apostolic authority, abso- 
lute regard must be paid to the chief 
Apostle's statements of the great facts 
of the atonement and the consecutive 
order of their occurrence. He says : 
"I delivered unto you first of all that 
which I also received, how that Christ 
died for our sins according to the Scrip- 
tures : and that he was buried, and that 
he rose again the third day according 
to the Scriptures." Now, if between 



THE APOSTOLIC FORMULA. 85 

his burial and resurrection, Christ had 
descended to Gehenna, or hell, to dis- 
play his triumph over the powers of 
darkness, or for any purpose whatever, 
is it possible that so important a fact 
in the grand and solemn procession of 
events should be omitted by the Apos- 
tle ? And what gives special emphasis 
to these statements is the fact that Paul 
declares he had received them from 
Christ, (see parallel passage, i Cor. xi. 
23,) and closes each separate statement 
with the assurance that his affirmation 
of the occurrence of these events was 
according to the Scriptures. 

Now, what we ask of the church is 
simply to give up "He descended into 
hell" which is unscriptural, and a mere 
human interpretation, and to conform 
this part of the creed to the inspired 
formula of Paul — " was crucified, dead, 



OO THE APOSTOLIC FORMULA. 

and buried: the third day he rose again 
from the dead" &c. It is because we 
love this Creed, that we desire to see it 
drop this spurious interjection of Ro- 
manism, which mars its beauty and dis- 
turbs its musical harmony. Because 
we love it and use it, we will plead with 
the Church to restore this noble confes- 
sion of Protestant Christendom to its 
primitive purity and apostolic consist- 
ency. 





VII. 



THE UNSEEN WORLD. 



87 




VII. 

THE UNSEEN WORLD. 

". . . .But what am I? 
An infant crying in the night : 
An infant crying for the light : 
And with no language but a cry. ' ' 

THROUGH all the past, men of 
every degree of culture and every 
form of religion, have felt an ever-recur- 
ring, irrepressible longing to look into 
the future. And though that future lies 
dark before us, there has always been 
an infinite hope in the darkness. Even 
to the seemingly worldly and careless 
man, there are intervals of thoughtful- 

8* 89 



9° THE UNSEEN WORLD. 

ness, in the twilight of the evening or 
the lonely musings of the night-season, 
— when the question comes up silently 
from the soul and reaches out into that 
future: "What after death for me re- 
mains ? " Even to him there is hope at 
least for a continuance of life beyond 
its seeming- extinction. 

And yet it is a curious fact, that while 
man instinctively looks to the future, 
that future itself is concealed by a veil, 
which he can neither lift nor penetrate. 
Even the little light which glimmers 
through the veil, while it reveals some- 
thing beyond, leaves the vast horizon 
of the future overhung with gigantic 
shadows. That old question of Job 
which has come down to us through 
the passing generations, " If a man die, 
shall he live again?" we can answer. 
There is in the soul itself— its faculties, 



THE UNSEEN WORLD. 9 1 

its conscience, its moral instincts, its 
quenchless aspirations — in all these 
there is that which is both the pledge 
and the earnest of our immortality: 

" A voice within us speaks that startling word, 
6 Man, thou shalt never die ! ' 1 ' 

Yes, we shall live, but where and how} 
What and where shall be the state of 
the dead ? Do they linger in some in- 
termediate state of dreamy unconscious- 
ness and imperfection ? Or do they 
enter at once upon their final state of 
happiness or misery? These are ques- 
tions of intense personal interest to 
every man ; they touch what is pro- 
foundest in human thought, and tender- 
est in human affection. The heart, in 
its intensest sympathies and divinest 
aspirations, has yearned to catch some 
glimpse of the future, and to lift the 



92 THE UNSEEN WORLD. 

veil from scenes which lie beyond the 
range of time and sense. 

Thoughtful men of all ages, philos- 
ophers, poets, theologians, have been 
exercised about this question touching 
the where and the how of the soul di- 
rectly after death ; and there is scarcely 
another question that has such a hold 
and fascination upon the human mind. 
And yet the Bible, while its teachings 
upon the finalities of the future state 
are copious and articulate, is remarkably 
reticent upon all the details of human 
destiny. Christ, the great Teacher, in 
what he says upon the state of the de- 
parted, addresses himself not so much 
to the speculative fancy as to faith and 
the moral feelings. Apart from the 
parable of Dives and Lazarus, there is 
hardly anything in his teachings con- 
cerning the state of the soul between 



THE UNSEEN WORLD. 93 

death and the judgment. Even those 
whom he recalled from the unseen 
world, say nothing of that world. The 
widow's son, we are told, sat up and 
began to speak, but we are not informed 
what he said. It may be the mother 
and the friends that stood by the bier, 
heard the words of the returning spirit 
only as the babble of a child, from 
which they could draw no definite mean- 
ing, and to which they could respond 
only by caresses. Lazarus, called back 
by the power of Jesus, said nothing 
about the spirit-world. It is doubtful 
whether, if he had spoken, his sisters 
could have understood the things he 
had seen and heard and felt. All that 
can be said concerning this, is thus ex- 
pressed by Tennyson in his In Memo- 
riant: 



94 THE UNSEEN WORLD. 

" Where went thou, brother, those four days ? 
There lives no record of reply, 
Which, telling what it is to die, 
Had surely added praise to praise. 

" Behold a man raised up by Christ ! 
The rest remaineth unrevealed : 
He told it not ; or something sealed 
The lips of that evangelist. ' ' 

The state of believers immediately 
after death has been the subject of much 
speculation in the church from the ear- 
liest times, and various, if not antago- 
nistic, theories have been advanced ac- 
cording as men have adopted a more 
literal or a more fanciful interpretation 
of the Scriptures, Some of the early 
Fathers of the Church protested against 
the theory of the believer's direct tran- 
sition from earth to heaven, while others 
looked upon the doctrine of an inter- 
mediate state as heretical, and insisted 



THE UNSEEN WORLD, 95 

upon the belief that all dying in the 
Lord were at once exalted to his pres- 
ence. " At the Reformation, many Pro- 
testant theologians, in rejecting a purga- 
tory, rejected also the notion of an in- 
termediate state, while others retained 
the doctrine that the souls of the right- 
eous linger in some vestibule of the 
heavenly kingdom until the last judg- 
ment. The former view is well expressed 
in the burial service of the Church of 
England for the dead : ' Almighty God, 
with whom do live the spirits of those that 
depart hence in the Lord, and with whom 
the souls of the faithful, after they are 
delivered from the burden of the flesh, 
are in joy and felicity/ " 

It may seem strange that our Lord 
says so little in detail about the life to 
come, as we call it; though in truth it is 
one life with the present — as the leaf 



96 THE UNSEEN WORLD. 

and the blossom are one life. But while 
he seems strangely reticent upon the 
specific modes of the soul's future ex- 
istence and the minute details of time 
and place, his utterances concerning 
the finalities of human destiny are won- 
derfully clear and emphatic. It would 
seem that in his view the one great, 
underlying fact of future retribution, 
of everlasting punishment, and eternal 
life — of Hell and Heaven — was so 
momentous, as to overshadow the mere 
accidental and minute conditions of the 
endless future. And while it is true 
that Jesus said but little concerning the 
state of the soul between death and the 
judgment, yet, in that one golden prom- 
ise dropped from the cross, he "lifted 
the veil from untold possibilities of life 
and felicity to the soul after death." In 
the answer to that prayer of the peni- 



THE UNSEEN WORLD. 97 

tent malefactor by his side, heaven 
dawned upon the vision of that dying but 
trusting sinner. "And Jesus said unto 
him, Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt 
thou be with me in paradise!' 

An exegetical analysis of this promise 
will give us the true apocalypse of a 
redeemed soul immediately after death; 
for we have no reason to regard this as 
an exceptional case in the conditions of 
the saved in a future world, but rather 
as the common allotment of all the re- 
deemed as they pass into the invisible 
world. This touching episode in the 
scene of the crucifixion ought to illu- 
mine the dark future and make the 
gate of death to every believer radiant 
as the gate of heaven, and the very 
vestibule of glory. The promise of 
Jesus to that penitent, trusting, dying 
malefactor is expressed in terms that 



98 THE UNSEEN WORLD. 

are clear, defined, intelligible, and em- 
phatic ; and interpreted according to 
the common laws of exegesis and Scrip- 
tural usage, his words leave no room 
for the current fancies and speculations 
about an intermediate place, where the 
souls of believers are left in dreamy 
revery, to linger in some vestibule of 
the heavenly kingdom until the last 
judgment. The promise, though brief, 
is comprehensive of all we ever hoped for 
in our happiest conceptions of heaven, 
and more than satisfies every instinct 
and aspiration of our immortality. 

To-day shalt thou be with me in para- 
dise. A Scriptural analysis of this prom- 
ise, will show that almost every word 
is an illumination of the future, dispel- 
ling at once the cold mists of doubt and 
the fancies of human speculation, and 
revealing in beautiful and attractive 



THE UNSEEN WORLD. 99 

conspicuity the home and condition of 
departed believers. That promise lifted 
the veil, and revealed heaven to the 
penitent malefactor, and made his deso- 
late and desponding heart leap for joy 
at the prospect of going at once from 
the agony and shame of the cross to 
the felicity and crown of the heavenly 
kingdom. An examination of the three 
constituent terms or expressions of this 
promise will give us about all we need 
to know, or all, indeed, we can under- 
stand in this world of the destiny of be- 
lievers after death. We have the place 
paradise, the condition with Jesus, and 
the time to-day, i. e. immediately after 
death. A consideration of these several 
points consecutively will exhaust the 
whole scope of these questions about 
the future, which have such a peculiar 
fascination for the human mind. 




VIII. 
PARADISE. 



IOI 




VIII. 



PARADISE. 



' * This world I deem but a beautiful dream 
Of shadows that are not what they seem ; 
Where visions rise giving dim surmise 
Of the things that shall meet our waking eyes. SJ 

WHAT and where is paradise ? 
What did Jesus mean by it in 
his promise to the penitent thief? Ob- 
serve, the question relates primarily to 
place rather than condition. We do 
not care, at present, to consider simply 
an intermediate state, for upon that 
point there is substantial agreement 
among all orthodox Christians. With 

the exception of a few theorists who 

103 



104 PARADISE. 

maintain a suspension of consciousness 
between death and the judgment, Chris- 
tians generally believe in an interme- 
diate state, meaning by that a separa- 
tion between soul and body, and conse- 
quent incompleteness in the degrees 
of happiness and misery, until their 
final reunion in the resurrection morn. 
To this view there can be no objection ; 
but for the additional idea, that during 
this interval there is a common place of 
all the dead, there is not, in our view, any 
satisfactory warrant in the word of God. 
i . What did our Lord intend by para- 
dise? We answer, in the language of 
a distinguished critic, " that he meant 
no part of what in Scripture is called 
hades." Here we come in conflict with 
the popular sentiment on this subject. 
For it is quite common to speak of 
hades as a place of the dead, both 



PARADISE. I05 

good and bad ; one department called 
Paradise, being the abode of the right- 
eous ; the other called Tartarus, being 
the abode of the wicked. And this 
view, it is said, was common among Jews 
and Greeks and Romans. And hades, 
it is affirmed, is so used in the Bible, as 
indicating the state of the dead indis- 
criminately. 

That hades had this meaning among 
the Greeks cannot be denied ; but that 
this was not its exclusive meaning, even 
among them, is evident from that re- 
markable passage in Plato's Republic, 
when, speaking of death, he says : 
"When any one is near that time in 
which he thinks he is going to die, there 
enters into him fear and anxiety ; for 
then the old stories about hades, how 
that the man who has here been guilty 
of wrong must there suffer punishment, 



I06 PARADISE. 

torture his soul/' Here evidently it is 
used by Plato as meaning the world 
of woe. But admitting that hades was 
used in classic Greek as denoting the 
place of the dead, both good and bad, 
that was not its only meaning ; for it was 
sometimes employed to indicate exclu- 
sively the world of woe ; so that the 
question comes up to the biblical student, 
which of its classical meanings is pre- 
dominant in the Bible ? And this ques- 
tion is specially pertinent since the term 
hades came into the New Testament, 
not from the classic Greek, but from the 
Septuagint translation of the Old Tes- 
tament. 

Hades occurs sixty-four times in the 
Old Testament, and with only four ex- 
ceptions is the translation of Sheol, and 
may therefore be regarded as substan- 
tially its synonym. "Indeed, both words 



PARADISE. IO7 

etymologically denote an unseen, a dark 
and dismal place. And in exact accord- 
ance with this original signification of 
hades is its usage ; never in a single 
case, either in the Old or New Testa- 
ment, expressing or implying anything 
desirable, but always that which is 
gloomy and forbidding." It will be 
found upon examination of the New 
Testament that hades always has a 
reference to some dismal and repulsive 
place, and never an allusion to what is 
cheerful and attractive ; and hence there 
is not a passage in which it involves the 
idea of an indiscriminate abode of the 
dead other than the grave. There is 
not a passage which speaks of a good 
man as going to it, or having any per- 
sonal association with it. Whatever 
else is meant by the paradise promised 
to the penitent thief, it evidently does 



108 PARADISE. 

not mean any part of hades. The 
idea of a common residence of the 
righteous and of the wicked after death 
is a relic of classic mythology, and is 
a mere vagary of the imagination, with- 
out any countenance from the word of 
God. For even hades, which, from its 
derivation and classic usage, might in- 
clude the whole invisible world, when- 
ever its meaning reaches beyond the 
grave, always points to the place of 
future punishment. And it is strange that 
a word, which from its etymology and use 
has only gloomy and repulsive associa- 
tions, should ever be employed to des- 
ignate the abode of the righteous in 
the future world, which is uniformly rep- 
resented as one of unshaded light and 
beauty and pleasures for evermore. 

2. Scriptural meaning of paradise. — 
What, then, did Jesus mean by paradise, 



PARADISE. IO9 

when he made this promise to the peni- 
tent malefactor? Evidently not some 
gloomy department of hades, some 
mystic region of half- consciousness, 
where the soul should linger for thou- 
sands of years waiting for the resur- 
rection morn. No, not any such half- 
way place, but heaven ; he meant 
heaven. If this can be established 
upon Scriptural grounds, it will settle 
a good many of the current speculations 
about the destiny of the soul after death. 
That Christ meant heaven, and not some 
intermediate place, is evident from the 
derivation and Scriptural import of the 
word, and the uniform testimony of the 
Bible concerning the future condition 
of the pious dead. 

The word paradise came into the 
New Testament from the Septuagint, 
where it was used for Eden. By sin 



HO PARADISE. 

man lost the primeval paradise, and 
was driven out of it; by the redemp- 
tion of Christ, the believer is restored 
to the Divine favor and to the blessed- 
ness of that communion with God, which 
he had lost. And how natural that 
Christ, having finished the work of 
human redemption, should re-enter par- 
adise as the head of the redeemed, 
taking with him, as a trophy of his 
finished work, and as an earnest of his 
Church, the converted malefactor into its 
holy and blissful beauty ? What better 
name for the heaven which Christ has 
purchased for the believer than para- 
dise ? If there is a second Adam, why 
should there not be a second paradise? 
But paradise in the Jewish conception 
was not only a name of the past — 
a place of beauty and blessedness, 
adorned with the symbolic tree of life, 



PARADISE. Ill 

that lingered in the memory as some 
happy dream of the night — but it was 
also a promise and hope of the future ; 
sometimes a type of the blessedness to 
be enjoyed by the people of God. In 
Isaiah we read : " The Lord shall com- 
fort Zion ; he will comfort all her waste 
places ; and he will make her wilderness 
like Eden, and her desert like the garden 
of the Lord." Now, in the Septuagint, 
this scene of beauty, "joy and glad- 
ness, thanksgiving, and the voice of mel- 
ody," is expressed by the word para- 
dise. Such being the idea of paradise 
current among the Jews, and familiar to 
Christ from the Septuagint, and probably 
known even to the penitent thief, can 
we hesitate as to what the Saviour 
meant when he said to that poor, peni- 
tent sinner by his side, thou shalt be with 
me in paradise ? Is it likely he would 



112 PARADISE, 

tantalize that poor soul by an equivocal 
answer, or by the use of a symbol 
of doubtful meaning ? Looking at the 
condition of that anxious penitent, 
trembling on the verge of eternity, with 
that suppliant cry for mercy, and know- 
ing the considerate tenderness of Jesus, 
do we not expect an answer that would 
be clear and intelligible to the mind of 
a common Jew, and so to this poor, 
dying penitent? The prayer referred 
to a future and spiritual kingdom in the 
invisible world to which they were now 
departing ; and we naturally expect the 
answer of Christ to correspond in some 
measure to the petition; it must in some 
way meet the holy aspiration of that 
believing, dying man. To suppose, ac- 
cording to some expositions, that Christ 
promised him some place in hades, 
where with the rest of the dead he 



PARADISE. 113 

should await for thousands of years the 
morn of the resurrection, is, under all 
the circumstances of the case, repulsive 
and wholly inadmissible. Christ used 
a word that was familiar to the common 
Jew, and which had a defined meaning 
in his conceptions of the future ; it was 
no doubt a word which to the penitent 
malefactor was a symbol of heaven. 
And so the promise of Christ met all 
the yearnings of that poor outcast 
from earth; it rang through his desolate 
heart like the music of heaven, for that 
word paradise, as it dropped from the 
lips of Jesus to him, meant heaven. 

This interpretation is confirmed by 
the meaning of the word paradise in 
other passages. It occurs in only two 
other places in the New Testament, 
in both of which it denotes a state of 
purity, peace, and happiness in the im- 

10* H 



114 PARADISE. 

mediate presence of God. In the paral- 
lel expression in the Apocalypse, para- 
dise is unquestionably used to mean 
heaven. In Rev. ii. 7, we read: "To 
him that overcometh will I give to eat 
of the tree of life, which is in the midst 
of the paradise of God." Now where 
the tree of life is, there is paradise; but 
in Rev. xxii. 1, 2, we read again: "He 
showed me a pure river of water of 
life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of 
the throne of God and of the Lamb. 
In the midst of the street of it, and on 
either side of the river, was there the 
tree of life. ,> Where the throne of God 
and the Lamb is there is the highest 
heaven, the place of final blessedness ; 
for we read, Rev. vii. 9, 10: "After this 
I beheld, and lo, a great multitude, which 
no man could number, of all nations, 
and kindreds, and people, and tongues, 



PARADISE. 115 

stood before the throne, and before the 
Lamb, clothed with white robes, and 
palms in their hands ; and cried with a 
loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God 
who sitteth upon the throne, and unto the 
Lamb." Now, by collating these pass- 
ages, we find that the tree of life is near 
the throne of God and the Lamb, which 
is heaven ; but this tree of life is in the 
midst of the paradise of God; therefore 
paradise is heaven. So also in Rev. iii. 
21, we read: "To him that overcometh 
will I grant to sit with me in my throne." 
In the other promise (Rev. ii. 7) quoted, 
those that overcome are to eat of the 
tree of life, which is in the midst of the 
paradise of God. These passages are 
parallel. And if there is anything in 
these special promises that is clear and 
intelligible and inspiriting, it is that 
paradise is heaven — that it includes all 



I I 6 PARADISE. 

that is meant by the purity and peace 
and blessedness of the immediate pres- 
ence and communion of God. And 
that more than was forfeited in paradise 
lost shall be realized in paradise re- 
gained, where Christ now lives and 
reigns for evermore. And was not this 
the paradise which Jesus promised to 
the penitent malefactor by his side ? 

Paul caught up into paradise \ — The 
other passage in the New Testament in 
which the word occurs is 2 Cor. xii. 4, 
where Paul, in describing some super- 
natural entrancement or spiritual ecstasy 
and exaltation which he had experienced, 
says that he was " caught up into para- 
dise, and heard unspeakable words, which 
it was not possible for a man to utter ; " 
and this paradise he speaks of again as 
"the third heaven," — a phrase denoting 
" an exalted region of light and blessed- 



PARADISE. 117 

ness, or the immediate presence of God/' 
Some think Paul had two visions, and 
that the "third heaven" and "paradise" 
refer to different places; but there is no. 
warrantable ground for such a presump- 
tion. A distinguished scholar, in his 
criticism on this passage, remarks that 
in the expression, " caught up to the 
third heaven," and " up to paradise," the 
prepositions used are different ; in the 
first case it is ecog, " caught up as far as 
the third heaven ; " in the other ecg, " into 
paradise," the xai, of the third verse, 
which many regard as introducing a 
second vision, we take as carrying for- 
ward the vision to a fuller and higher 
development of the celestial state. "That 
is, he was not only caught up into the 
third heaven, but introduced into para- 
dise, that part of the third heaven where 
the Divine glory is especially manifest, 



I l8 PARADISE, 

and where, consequently, he would see 
and hear many things which it was not 
possible to utter." 

How utterly irreconcilable is this 
whole passage to the opinion that para- 
dise is situated in sheol, or hades. Every- 
where in the Bible men are said to go 
dawn into sheol, as in the Creed, He de- 
scended into sheol, or hell ; but Paul 
was caught up into paradise, went there 
in the same direction — upward — that 
he went to the third heaven. The dis- 
crepancy must be patent to every read- 
er. And Paul, as was his manner, writ- 
ing as he did for Gentiles and Jews, re- 
peats his first statement, using for the 
state of the blest the word to which his 
Hebrew readers were accustomed. It 
may be he intended to teach them, in 
opposition to the popular Rabbinical no- 
tion, that paradise was not in sheol, or 



PARADISE. 119 

"the lower parts of the earth," but in 
the third heaven, which all admit is the 
immediate presence of God. With the 
fact, then, that in the two other places 
in the New Testament in which the word 
paradise occurs it unquestionably means 
heaven, can we for a moment question 
its meaning in this place? Did not 
Jesus use it here in its accepted Scriptu- 
ral import? and did he not mean to 
promise heaven to the penitent, over 
whom were then gathering the shades 
of death ? 

Paradise is heaven. — This view is 
confirmed by the uniform biblical repre- 
sentation of the believer's destiny in the 
unseen world. In the parable of Dives 
and Lazarus, Christ lifts the veil and re- 
veals their destiny in the future world. 
The rich man died, and in hades he lift- 
ed up his eyes, and saw Lazarus afar off 



120 PARADISE. 

in Abraham's bosom. Dives was in 
hades, a place of torment, and Lazarus 
in heaven, for in the phraseology of the 
Jews, Abraham's bosom meant heaven. 
Paul says, " We know that if our earth- 
ly house of this tabernacle were dis- 
solved, we have a building of God, a 
house not made with hands, eternal in 
the heavens. Therefore we are always 
confident, knowing that, whilst we are 
at home in the body, we are absent from 
the Lord." And where is the Chris- 
tian's home ? not in a foreign land, but 
with his people. Where is his dwelling? 
in sheol y or heaven ? Surely no one will 
say that hades is that home, that house 
not made with hands, eternal in the 
heavens." Again, Paul desired to de- 
part and to be with Christ. To be with 
Christ is to be in heaven ; for another 
Apostle tells us that " He has entered 



PARADISE. 121 

into heaven itself, now to appear in the 
presence of God for us." The same 
fact is presented in the vision and prayer 
of Stephen. " He, being full of the 
Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into 
heaven, and saw the glory of God, and 
Jesus standing on the right hand of 
God," and, in the expectancy of going 
thither, uttered the aspiration, "Lord 
Jesus, receive my spirit." Was all that 
a mere illusion of the fancy — or a sad 
mockery of the dying martyr? And 
can we believe, that as the vision passed 
away, the heavens were closed above 
Stephen, and he was left to descend 
into hades, to linger there for thou- 
sands of years ? So, again, John saw a 
great multitude, which no man could 
number, of all nations, and kindreds, and 
tongues, standing before the throne of 
God and the Lamb, clothed in white 



122 PARADISE. 

robes, and palms in their hands ; and 
these redeemed sinners were with God, 
before the throne, anterior to the final 
judgment, so that this vision of John is 
specially pertinent to the subject un- 
der discussion, as indicating the abode 
of the righteous between death and the 
resurrection. The fact is, that in all 
these passages referring to the righteous 
in the future world, we have the most 
distinct and unequivocal evidence — as 
clear as human and inspired language 
can communicate any fact — that be- 
lievers, after death, are in no dubious, 
misty, intermediate place of transition, 
which is neither heaven nor hell, but that 
having passed through all their tribula- 
tions, are forever at rest with the Lord 
in heaven. 

It seems to us conclusive, from the 
biblical usage of the term paradise, 



PARADISE. 123 

and especially as it is employed in the 
New Testament by Christ and Paul to 
indicate heaven, — that when Jesus said 
to the dying penitent, "thou shalt be 
with me in paradise/' he meant to open 
to hope the gate of heaven. The word, 
to the Jewish mind, was dear to memory 
and to hope. It suggested all that was 
beautiful and blessed in the first home 
of man, and all that was pure and bea- 
tific in the heavenly home, in the imme- 
diate presence of God. And as, more- 
over, the word hades has always a 
gloomy and repellent association, and as 
there is not a single instance in the 
Bible in which a righteous man is said 
to go there, when anything more than, 
and beyond, the grave is meant, we must 
conclude that to this trusting sinner, and 
to all true believers, the promise of 
paradise is the promise of heaven. And 



124 PARADISE. 

Christians, as they journey on this weary 
way of trial and conflict, can look up 
through the mists and clouds that 
gather over human life, and sometimes 
catch glimpses, through the opening 
heavens, of the coming rest and glory, 
and go on their way rejoicing. 




IX. 



HEAVEN— WITH JESUS. 



125 




IX. 

HEAVEN WITH JESUS. 

" Oh, then shall the veil be removed ; 

And round me thy brightness be pour'd : 
I shall meet Him whom absent I loved, 
I shall see Whom unseen I adored." 

IF the penitent thief had any diffi- 
culty about paradise, its locality or 
its peculiar enjoyments ; if, possibly, he 
might have had some shrinking from a 
place of such purity and association 
with the holy of all past generations, 
this part of the promise could not fail 

to settle all doubts, and inspire him with 

127 



128 



HEAVEN— WITH JESUS. 



a sweet, childlike confidence. He might 
not have very clear conceptions of the 
nature of paradise ; he might even 
shrink from entering so soon into the 
presence of a holy God and the com- 
panionship of the just made perfect; 
but Christ said, " Thou shalt be with 
me" and that was enough. 

i . With Jesus. — It was more than he 
had asked or even dared to hope. He 
had prayed to be remembered in some 
remote future — " When Thou comest" 
— but Christ said he should not only be 
remembered, but be with him; and 
with that assurance, he could rejoice 
with joy unspeakable and full of glory. 

It may seem strange that our Lord 
says so little in detail about the life to 
come. He rather turned the minds of 
his disciples towards that which was 
deeper, and lay at its root — the life it- 



HE A VEN— WITH JESUS. I 29 

self — " the oneness with God and his 
will, upon which the continuance of our 
conscious being follows of a necessity, 
and without which, if the latter were 
possible, it would be for human beings 
an utter evil." 

It is, moreover, noteworthy, how 
often in the New Testament, and in the 
representations of Christ himself, this 
promise to the dying malefactor is the 
verbal synonym of heaven ; how often 
this " being with Jesus " is made to em- 
body the highest conception — indeed, 
the inspired ideal of heaven, the be- 
liever s supreme felicity and glory in a 
future world. 

2. Promises of heaven. — When our 
Lord, in the twelfth chapter of the Gos- 
pel of John, is promising a final recom- 
pense of reward to those who lived and 
died for him, he says : " If any man serve 



I 30 HE A VE N— WI TH JESUS. 

me, let him follow me ; and where I am, 
there shall also my servant be." And 
in the fourteenth chapter of the same 
Gospel, comforting his disciples, sad and 
tearful in view of his departure, he says : 
" And if I go and prepare a place for 
you, I will come again, and receive you 
unto myself; that where I am, there ye 
may be also." And again, in that mem- 
orable prayer for his Church, we find 
this earnest appeal to the Father in be- 
half of his disciples in all generations. 
" Father, I will that they also, whom 
thou hast given me, be with me where I 
am ; that they may behold my glory, 
which thou hast given me." 

From these precious sayings, and 
fragmentary allusions of our Lord 
touching the condition of believers in a 
future world, we may learn that to be 
with him, in visible nearness and con- 



HE A VEN— WITH JESUS. 1 3 1 

scious communion, is heaven — is the 
highest felicity and glory of the re- 
deemed. So Paul felt. His loftiest aspi- 
ration was to be with Jesus ; this, in his 
conception of heaven, transcended all the 
devout and ecstatic communings of this 
life : " For I am in a strait betwixt two, 
having a desire to depart and to be with 
Christ: which is far better." 

3. Heaven is to be with Jesus. — Thus, 
in the promises of the Saviour ; in the 
devout aspirations of individual believ- 
ers; and in apocalyptic visions, heaven is 
represented as comprehended in the one 
great central fact — of being with Jesus. 
The countless multitude of all nations, 
which John saw, clothed in white, stood 
before the throne and before the Lamb ; 
and their ceaseless song was, " Salva- 
tion to our God, who sitteth upon the 
throne, and unto the Lamb." And the 



I3 2 HE A VEN— WITH JESUS. 

secret of that ecstatic song, as well as 
the perennial peace and blessedness of 
that great multitude, is found in the fur- 
ther revelation that " the Lamb which 
is in the midst of the throne shall feed 
them, and shall lead them unto living 
fountains of waters ; and God shall wipe 
away all tears from their eyes." 

To be with Jesus includes every- 
thing we can desire in our holiest 
moods of thought, or our devoutest as- 
pirations for God and the revelations 
of his glory. It is the consummation 
of all our longings for purity, and sanc- 
tity, and blessedness forever. For 
Jesus would not welcome to his pres- 
ence in glory any whose- dress was 
soiled with sin ; and Jude speaks of 
Christ as presenting his redeemed ones 
as " faultless before the presence of his 
glory ; " and John saw them before the 



HE A VE N— WI TH JESUS. 133 

throne with " robes made white in the 
blood of the Lamb." To be with Jesus 
then is to be personally purified from 
all sin ; to be admitted into the visible 
presence of the unveiled glory of the 
Godhead ; to enjoy the unclouded con- 
sciousness of the Divine love, and the 
fellowship of the Holy Trinity, and the 
communion of saints. To be with Jesus 
is to be where " there is fulness of joy 
and pleasures forever more." 

" Oh, the delights, the heavenly joys, 
The glories of the place, 
Where Jesus sheds the brightest beams 
Of his overflowing grace ! " 

There is not a pulse of joy, or a vis- 
ion of beauty, or a note of melody in 
heaven that is not in some way associ- 
ated with the "Lamb in the midst of 
the throne." And happy is the Chris- 

12 



134 HEAVEN— WITH JESUS. 

tian, who. in his holiest conceptions of 
heaven, and in his most transporting as- 
pirations for future glory, can centre all 
his hopes and longings in the one ab- 
sorbing thought of being with Jesus, 
and find expression for all his exultant 
feelings in the exclamation : " This is 
all my salvation, and all my desire ! " 

' ' Jesus ! the very thought of Thee 
With gladness fills my breast ; 
But dearer far Thy face to see, 
And in Thy presence rest. ' ' 




X. 



WHEN?— TO-DAY. 



135 




X. 

WHEN ? TO-DAY. 

' l There is no death ! what seems so is transition : 
This life of mortal breath. 
Is but a suburb of that life Elysian 
Whose portal we call death/ ' 

WHATEVER was meant by being 
with Jesus in paradise was to 
be realized by that penitent that very 
day. To-day thou shalt be with me. 

We are aware of the criticism that 
would separate the phrase designed to 
be emphatic from the clause of the verse 

with which it is naturally and gram- 
12* 137 



138 WHEN? — TO-DAY. 

matically connected. According to this 
quibble, (for it can hardly be called criti- 
cism,) the promise of Christ is rendered 
thus : " Verily I say, to-day, unto thee, 
thou shalt be with me in paradise;" as 
if the Saviour could have said it yester- 
day, or could have said it to-morrow, 
and therefore carefully introduced the 
expression that he said it to - day. 
Such a rendering of the verse is too 
r orced and unnatural to justify even this 
passing notice. It does violence to the 
grammatical structure of the passage ; 
it is not only contrary to all the textual 
readings, but gives to the Greek adverb 
an unusual position, and destroys the 
very gist and pertinence of the Saviour's 
answer. The grammatical construction 
of the text, the fitness of the reply, and 
the common sense of every intelligent 
reader, demand the version as it stands. 



WHEN?— TO-DAY. 139 

" To-day" before the sun shall set, be- 
fore the shadows of the coming night 
shall enwrap this mount of crucifixion, 

— to-day shalt thou be with me in para- 
dise. 

A distinguished critic remarks, on this 
passage, " That the prayer of the peni- 
tent thief had been, 'Lord, remember 
me when thou comest in thy kingdom/ 
not, as it is translated, 'into thy kingdom.' 
It is the preposition £v> not eig, and does 
not signify motion toward, but manner, 

— 'when thou comest in thy kingdom/ 
that is, with power and great glory, as 
he had said he should one day come. 
As though the penitent supplicant had 
said, ' Now thou art in humiliation, and 
this is the hour of the powers of dark- 
ness ; yet I know thou wilt in the end 
triumph over them all, and establish a 
glorious kingdom ; oh, then, remember 



14° WHEN?— TO-DAY. 

me/ To which the Saviour responds : 
' Thou needest not wait " till some dis- 
tant time for help ; even now, in all my 
apparent humiliation, am I mighty to 
save ; to-day shalt thou be with me in 
paradise."' " So that whatever was in- 
volved in the promise of paradise, was 
to be enjoyed by that trusting sinner 
that very day. 

i. No intermediate place. — There is 
nothing here of purgatory, or of any 
intermediate place between death and 
judgment. If ever there was need for 
any one to pass through some process 
of purgatorial purification, it was in the 
case of the penitent thief. He had lived 
a life of sin. He was now dying, and 
had only a short time before repented 
and believed. He had no time for 
good works and personal sanctification. 
Surely, he needed to go through pur- 



WHEN?— TO-DAY. I4I 

gatory, if any one ever did, who believed 
in Jesus. Yet he is told that on that 
very day he should be with Jesus in 
paradise. There was complete redemp- 
tion from sin at once. " The blood of 
Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin." 
And he might have sung, while hanging 
on the cross : 

" That blest moment I received Him 
Fill'd my soul with joy and peace; 
Love I much? I've much forgiven : 
I'm a miracle of grace." 

And for this dying sinner, snatched 
by the omnipotent hand of Jesus as a 
brand from the burning, there is no long 
and tedious way from the cross to the 
crown. He does not descend to some 
intermediate place in hades, some 
vague, undefined, mystic region, to 
linger there until the resurrection, but 
goes at once from the mount of cruci- 



142 WHEN?— TO-DA Y. 

fixion to the mount of God, from Cal- 
vary to paradise. Nor is this case to 
be regarded as exceptional, but rather 
as a type of all who depart in the Lord. 
Whatever may intervene between death 
and the judgment, the soul of the be- 
liever goes at once from earth to be 
with Jesus in heaven. 

This is the uniform and emphatic 
testimony of Revelation whenever it 
touches upon this subject. Christ said 
to his disciples, " And if I go and pre- 
pare a place for you, I will come again, 
and receive you unto myself; that where 
I am, ye may be also." This promise 
does not relate to the second advent, 
when all the redeemed would be gath- 
ered about him, but to the calling of 
these eleven disciples, as individuals, to 
himself, as one after another they should 
finish their work and follow their Lord 



WHEN? — TO-DAY. I43 

to the unseen world. So in the parable, 
which draws aside the veil from the 
future world, we are told that "the 
beggar died, and was carried by the 
angels into Abraham's bosom," which, 
in Jewish phraseology, is the verbal syn- 
onym of heaven. So, again, Paul says, 
"We are confident, and willing rather 
to be absent from the body, and to be 
present with the Lord." Certainly this 
means personal nearness and actual 
vision ; for the contrast is of sight to 
faith. Paul evidently means that to be 
absent from the body is to be con- 
sciously near to Christ, to be with him 
in heaven. And of like significance is 
the prayer of Stephen : " Lord Jesus, 
receive my spirit ! " Was it not the 
aspiration of this dying martyr to be 
with Jesus ? And where would the Lord 
Jesus receive the soul of his saint but 



144 WHEN? — TO-DAY. 

to himself? And verily, like the peni- 
tent thief, Stephen was that very day 
with Jesus in paradise. 

In this touching story of Calvary we 
are not told how the expiring malefactor 
was affected by this promise. But we 
can imagine how his quivering lips 
would whisper his grateful love to Jesus; 
how his dim and failing eye would again 
kindle into rapture ; and how his wan 
and pallid countenance would glow with 
celestial light, and his whole spiritual 
being throb with the joy unspeakable 
and full of glory. He heard, amid the 
mysterious darkness that fell around 
the cross, the shout of triumph, "It is 
finished ! " from his expiring Lord ; and 
following his Deliverer through the veil, 
soon the Master and the servant, the 
Saviour and the saved, met in paradise, 
in their imperial home. 



WHEN?— TO-DAY. H5 

How rapid was the process and the 
consummation of redemption to the 
penitent thief! In one day, he was 
enlightened, pardoned, sanctified, and 
saved. The morning saw him a hard- 
ened malefactor, the evening a disem- 
bodied spirit in glory. In the morning 
crucified, in the evening crowned. In 
the morning weeping the first tear of 
penitence ; in the evening chanting the 
first anthem of praise. He seems to 
stand before us now, in the visions of 
eternity, and Jesus above him, holding 
him forth as a trophy of redeeming 
grace, and proclaiming in his own 
ecstasy, " I am he that speak in right- 
eousness, yet MIGHTY TO SAVE ! " 

2. Grace and glory. — 
" One moment here, the next beyond the stars." 
In this Scriptural analysis of the prom- 

r 3 K 



I46 WHEN?— TO-DAY. 

ise of Christ to a dying believer, we have 
light from the cross upon the unseen 
world. That promise lifts the veil, and 
gives us an apocalypse of the redeemed 
immediately after death. The dying 
malefactor goes from Calvary and the 
cross to paradise and the crown. And 
so all who die in the Lord are not left to 
linger in some intermediate place, some 
dim, mystic region between heaven and 
hell ; but go at once into visible, con- 
scious proximity to Jesus, in the pres- 
ence of his revealed glory, and -unite 
with the saints in light, in their heav- 
enly communings and ecstatic joys. So 
that to the believer, dying is only birth 
into a higher sphere of being — absent 
from the body, present with the Lord ; 
it is only transition from earth to the 
beatific vision of Jesus, and to the ex- 
perience of the assimilative power of 



WHEN? — TO-DAY. H7 

that vision. For as John says : " Be- 
loved, now are we the sons of God ; and 
it doth not yet appear what we shall be ; 
but we know that when he shall appear, 
we shall be like him ; for we shall see 
him as he is." That first sight of Jesus 
will be a transformative vision — the last 
touch of redeeming grace in the com- 
plete sanctification of the believer, so 
that he appears " faultless before the 
presence of his glory with exceeding 
joy." There is so much imperfection 
in the best of Christians, that a change 
must take place at death only second 
to what took place at conversion. So 
that not only in the case of the penitent 
thief, but in the departure of every be- 
liever, the Spirit of God must crown all 
his previous work with the last instan- 
taneous touch of sanctification. And 
like the gorgeous flower which opens 



I48 WHEN? — TO-DAY. 

its full-blown beauty only to the mid- 
night sky, so it would seem that the 
soul, as it passes out of the dark hour 
of death into the sunlight of heaven, 
will blossom into perfect purity and 
sanctity: that the first glimpse of the 
unveiled Saviour will transform the be- 
liever into his likeness, and that first 
vision of Jesus will be the culmination 
of grace into glory. We shall be like 
him — like Jesus — for we shall see him 
as he is. 

" O glorious hour ! O blest abode ! 
We shall be near and like our God ! ' ' 

3. The Second Advent. — Here we 
close the discussion of a theme of in- 
tense interest to every child of God. 
We have in this promise of Jesus to the 
dying malefactor the assurance of im- 
mediate blessedness to every believer 
who dies in the Lord. Unharmed by 



WHEN? — TO-DAY. 149 

death, with his personality unchanged, 
he enters at once into conscious union 
and blissful fellowship with Christ in 
paradise. But this is not all ; for the 
Scriptures speak of something yet more 
felicitous and glorious in the final con- 
summation of the work of redemption 
at the resurrection of the dead. The 
blessedness of the righteous, after 
death, " will be full even to the measure 
of his capacity; but the resurrection and 
the transformation into the likeness of 
Christ's glorious body will augment both 
his capacity and his means of blessed- 
ness." 

Nitzsch, with his usual soundness, 
marks the distinction between the be- 
liever's entering into bliss and his con- 
summation in and with the whole body 
of the redeemed. " The mere duration 

and immortality of the soul, or the bare 
13* 



15° WHEN? — TO-DAY. 

deliverance from its earthly habitation, 
does not complete Christian hope ; for 
the consummation of the individual is 
by no means perfect so long as the en- 
tire creation and church are not con- 
summated with him and he with them." 
The redemptive work will not be com- 
pleted until the resurrection ; so that the 
period intervening between death and 
the last great day will be, for the believer, 
an intermediate state — still a condition 
of unutterable joy and of conscious near- 
ness and fellowship with Christ in para- 
dise. But not till the resurrection shall 
the redeemed reach the culmination of 
their bliss in glory : " Then cometh the 
end ; when the Son shall deliver up the 
kingdom to God, even the Father, and 
God shall be all in all." 

In that august day, says Paul, "The 
Lord himself shall descend from heaven 



WHEN?— TO-DAY. 151 

with a shout, with the voice of the arch- 
angel, and with the trump of God : and 
the dead in Christ shall rise first : then 
we which are alive and remain shall be 
caught up together with them in the 
clouds, to meet the Lord in the air : " 
then shall go up " the grand procession 
to the gates of the New Jerusalem 
swung open in mid-air ; the trumpets 
sounding ; the vast ether palpitating with 
harmonic symphonies ; the sons of God 
shouting for joy ; the very stars ringing 
out silvery chimes for the marriage of 
the Lamb — the final consummation of 
all things terrestrial and celestial in the 
union of Christ and his Church in 
everlasting joy." And that will be the 
consummation of the whole work of 
redemption and the final glory of the 
believer. And so shall we ever be 
with the Lord : 



152 



WHEN?—TO-DA Y. 



" Knowing as we are known, 

How shall we love that word ; 
And oft repeat, before the throne, 
' Forever with the Lord. ' ' ' 




XI. 



PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS. 



153 




XL 

PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS. 

FROM the foregoing analysis of that 
touching episode in the crucifix- 
ion, we have suggestions of hope to the 
penitent, of caution to the careless, and of 
blessedness to the believer. 

i . Hope to the penitent. — 

"Believing, we rejoice 

To see the curse remove ; 
We bless the Lamb with cheerful voice, 
And sing his bleeding love." 

Here is the promise and the pledge 
of eternal life to all who repent and 
believe. This penitent thief is a type 
of all who turn from sin and trust 

155 



156 PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS. 

the Saviour. His cry for mercy, like 
all deep feeling, is in few but inten- 
sified words. He recognizes in Jesus 
the Lord of the invisible world. His 
new-born faith sees through the dark 
clouds that hang round the cross, and 
in the face of that mocking crowd tri- 
umphantly proclaims the meek sufferer 
by his side to be the Son of God and 
Saviour of the world. And in that 
prayer of abandonment and desolation, 
that cry to Jesus for mercy, is treasured 
up all his hopes for eternity — "Lord, 
remember me," a poor, outcast, dying 
sinner. 

" Amid the glories of that world, 
Dear Saviour, think on me ; 
And in the vict'ries of thy death 
Let me a sharer be ! ' } 

There was painful suspense in the 
short interval of silence that followed. 



PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS, 157 

It was the last appeal of the dying sin- 
ner. If that cry for mercy is not an- 
swered, then the last gleam of hope 
dies in his desolate heart, and the poor, 
lonely outcast from earth and heaven 
must sink from that torturing cross 
under a starless sky, and over his lost 
soul must gather the darkness of an 
eternal night. But that moment, upon 
which the destiny of the soul seemed 
to tremble in such fearful suspense, — 
a moment that throbbed with such mo- 
mentous issues, — was soon broken : 

" His prayer the dying Jesus hears; 

And instantly replies, 
6 To-day thy parting soul shall be 

With me in paradise.' M 

The prayer is heard, and the sinner 
is saved. He who hung by his side 
was the Son of God and Saviour of 
men. He was on that cross as the 



158 PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS. 

Lamb of God for sinners slain. And 
now in dying he saves from death. 
His last act was to snatch that perish- 
ing sinner from the grasp of the De- 
stroyer, and bear his ransomed soul to 
paradise as the first trophy of his fin- 
ished redemption. The dark mount of 
crucifixion is radiant with the- bow of 
promise to a dying world. There is 
heard over the cross, as over the cradle, 
the same glad tidings of a " Saviour, 
who is Christ the Lord ; " over Calvary, 
as over Bethlehem, is heard the jubilant 
song of the angels : " Glory to God in 
the highest, and on earth peace, good- 
will toward men." 

As we linger in the light of the cross, 
we see in this pardoned sinner the un- 
utterable grace of God in the salvation 
of the lost. From this affecting death- 
scene there is still sounded forth: "This 



PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS. *59 

is a faithful saying, and worthy of all ac- 
ceptation, that Christ Jesus came into 
the world to save sinners, of whom I am 
chief." It still points the penitent sin- 
ner to the fountain opened for sin and 
uncleanness. There is salvation for all 
who repent and believe. He who saved 
this poor, trusting sinner will save 
every one who looks to him in peni- 
tence and faith. 

" The dying thief rejoiced to see 
That fountain in his day ; 
O there may I, though vile as he, 
Wash all my sins away. 

"Dear, dying Lamb, thy precious blood 
Shall never lose its power, 
Till all the ransom' d church of God 
Be saved, to sin no more." 

2. Cautionary suggestion. — 

" Be wise to-day ; 't is madness to defer." 

Let no one pervert this wondrous 



160 PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS. 

display of the grace of God to his own 
destruction. Let no one plead the sal- 
vation of this penitent sinner in the last 
hours of life as an excuse for delay, 
under the delusive hope that it will be 
time enough to repent in the last sick- 
ness. This instance of conversion in 
the close of life stands alone in the rec- 
ords of the Bible. Its peculiar and 
solemn isolation is at once suggestive 
of hope and peril. It has been said 
that one such instance as the salvation 
of the dying thief has been given that 
none might despair — only one, that 
none might presume. If it inspires the 
hope 

" That while the lamp holds out to burn, 
The vilest sinner may return," 

it speaks with equal emphasis and so- 
lemnity of the perils of delay. 



PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS. l6l 

If from the penitent thief we are en- 
couraged to hope that there may be re- 
pentance in the very close of life, the 
impenitent malefactor on the other side 
of Christ suggests the solemn warning 
that men ordinarily die as they have 
lived. The one repents, and goes from 
the cross to paradise ; the other, with the 
same affecting scenes before him, out- 
wardly as near to the pitying and 
omnipotent Saviour, persists in his 
mockery and unbelief, and goes from 
Calvary to perdition. 

Those who go through life in persist- 
ent impenitence and unbelief become 
hardened in sin, and mostly die as they 
have lived. The late Albert Barnes 
testified, that during his long pastoral 
life he could not recall a single instance 
of what he believed to be genuine re- 
pentance in the last sickness, or closing 

14* l 



l62 PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS. 

scene of life. Let no one plead this 
solitary instance of salvation at the 
eleventh hour as an excuse for the de- 
lay of conversion. It may be that this 
poor sinner had never seen Jesus be- 
fore ; it may be that this was his first 
intelligent view of Christ as the Saviour 
of men ; and that to the first call his 
heart responded in penitence and faith, 
as expressed in that remarkable prayer. 
But how different with those who have 
grown up in impenitence and un- 
belief in the Church, and in the midst 
of Christian institutions. How often 
have they heard of Jesus and of heaven? 
How often have they heard his calls of 
mercy ! How often have they felt the 
touches of infinite love and the influ- 
ences of the Holy Spirit ! And how 
can such plead this case as an excuse 
for putting off their return to God and 



PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS. I 63 

the acceptance of Christ as the only 
Saviour ! O let no one favored with 
manifold opportunities of knowing 
Christ and trusting in him, let no one 
so often warned of the perils of delay, 
trifle with salvation by delay. To wait 
for a more convenient season is to im- 
peril the soul for eternity. " Behold, 
now is the accepted time ; behold, now 
is the day of salvation." 

" Delay not, delay not, O sinner draw near; 
The waters of life are now flowing for thee ! 
No price is demanded, the Saviour is here, 
Redemption is purchased, salvation is free." 

3. Blessedness of the believer's death. — 

" 'Tis a blessing to live, but a greater to die ; 
And the best of the world is its path to the 
sky." 

The hour of death, to the Christian, is 
the hour of entrance into heaven. Ab- 



1 64 PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS. 

sent from the body, in a moment, in the 
twinkling of an eye, he is present with 
the Lord. At the very instant when 
the last convulsion passes, when the 
last breath departs, when the last pulse 
has spent its feeble throb, the soul has 
winged its way and passed the cherubic 
guards, and^ is with Jesus in paradise. 
You gaze upon the cold and lifeless 
form, but the spirit is with its Lord ; you 
follow the body to its last resting-place 
in the silent grave, but the deathless 
soul is with the redeemed before the 
throne. 

' ' In vain my fancy strives to paint 
The moment after death ; 
The glories that surround a saint 
When yielding up his breath. ' ■ 

Thus has it been with all the saints 
who have passed away since the begin- 
ning of time ; thus has it been with our 



PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS. I 65 

own loved ones who have departed in 
the Lord. We have no need to pray 
for them, seeing they are already with 
Christ; no cause have we to mourn 
for them, for, having followed Christ on 
earth, they have gone to be with him in 
heaven. 

" High in yonder realms of light 
Dwell the raptured saints above, 
Far beyond our feeble sight, 
Happy in Immanuers love ! " 

And can we see this illumination of 
death's dark hour; can we hear that 
voice from heaven saying, " Blessed 
are the dead who die in the Lord, from 
henceforth?" — without the profoundest 
homage to our holy religion, which has 
brought life and immortality to light; 
without uniting in that simple and 
touching acknowledgment of the great 
Apostle, "I thank God through Jesus 



1 66 PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS. 

Christ our Lord." O death ! dark 
hour to hopeless unbelief! what art thou 
to the Christian's assurance? Great 
hour of answer to life's prayer; great 
hour that shall break asunder the bond 
of life's mystery ; hour of release from 
life's burden ; hour of reunion with the 
loved and lost: what mighty hopes 
hasten to their fulfilment in thee ! what 
longings, what aspirations, — breathed 
in the still night beneath the silent stars ; 
what deep meditations of joy ; what 
possibilities of sanctity and blessedness, 
all verge to their consummation in thee! 
O death — the Christian's death ! — what 
art thou but the gate of life, the threshold 
of heaven ! Thanks be to God : let us 
say it, Christians, in the exultant words 
of the Apostle: 'Thanks be to God, 
who giveth us the victory, through our 
Lord Jesus Christ ! " 



PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS. l6j 

" Jesus, thou Prince of life ! 
Thy chosen cannot die : 
Like Thee, they conquer in the strife, 
To reign with Thee on high." 

How far is it to heaven ? — 

"Oh sweet and strange it seems to me, that ere 
this day is done 
The voice that now is speaking may be beyond 
the sun." 

We linger yet a moment at the cross. 
In that promise dropped from the lips 
of the dying Saviour there is a revela- 
tion of the future : there is a light flash- 
ing through the dark veil — an apocalypse 
of the believer immediately beyond 
death. And it is more precious and 
satisfying to the heart than all the 
beautiful symbols and gorgeous pictures 
of John, setting forth heaven to the 
imagination. 

We do not care to follow the specu- 



1 68 PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS. 

lative theories about the locality of 
heaven, and the special vocations and 
activities of the redeemed. It is enough 
to know that, absent from the body, we 
shall be present with the Lord. Some 
one, taking the mathematical estimate 
of the velocity of light and the distances 
of the heavenly bodies as revealed by 
modern astronomy, has raised the ques- 
tion of time between the soul's depart- 
ure from the body and its arrival in 
heaven. If heaven is beyond the stars 
of the twelfth magnitude, then, accord- 
ing to this theorist, the soul at death 
must travel faster than light, or be over 
four thousand years in reaching heaven. 
And there come up the speculative 
questions : Where is heaven ? and how 
far is it from earth ? 

" Where is the land of light, 

The land of which we sing ? ' ' 



PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS. I 69 

We do not care to inquire ! We do 
not care to indulge in these useless specu- 
lations and idle fancies. We can wait 
to know all about the locality and phys- 
ical scenery, the special pursuits and en- 
joyments of heaven. It is enough to 
know that the believer at death shall 
be with Jesus and behold his glory. It 
satisfies every longing and every aspi- 
ration of the loving heart in its highest 
moods of expectancy. Paradise is very 
near to every one whose life is hid with 
Christ in God. The Christian pilgrim, 
conscious of this nearness, can sing 
hopefully, with the gathering shades of. 
every evening : 

"Here in the body pent, 

Absent from Him I roam, 
Yet nightly pitch my moving tent 
A day's march nearer home. ,, 

Let Christians, standing in this light 
15 



17° PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS. 

and revelation from the cross, feel the 
inspiration of this blessed assurance. 
It is not far to Paradise. The crown is 
not far from the cross. There is but a 
step between us and glory ! Some day, 
this promise of Jesus to the dying male- 
factor will come to every believer. On 
some day, the message will come to each 
one of us from Jesus: "To-day shalt 
thou be with me in paradise!' How this 
thought should illumine the lowliest 
path, and exhilarate the saddest heart ! 
What manner of persons ought we to 
be in all holy conversation and godli- 
ness, looking for and hasting unto the 
coming of the day of God ! How 
should we hold fast that which we have, 
that no man take our crown ! How in- 
sensible should we be to the fascinations 
of sinful pleasure or the allurements 
of worldly ambition ! What are the 



PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS. Ijl 

riches, and pageantry, and glory of earth 
to us, who are so soon to be with Jesus 
in paradise ? Shall we allow the hum- 
bleness of earthly fortunes to shade the 
brow so soon to be radiant with the 
crown of glory ? What should we have 
thought of Raphael painting the Trans- 
figuration if he could have let the 
shadow of a Roman cloud disturb his 
equanimity ? What should we have 
thought of Milton writing the Paradise 
Lost if he could have let the flashing 
tinsel of a passing courtier's mantle 
make him envious ? 

And what should we think of our- 
selves, if, as the children of God, ex- 
pecting so soon to see Jesus, and to be 
like him, we should allow any pageantry 
of earth to divert for a moment our 
heavenward look, or any passing pleas- 
ure to check our ardent aspiration ? 



I7 2 PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS. 

So near to final victory, shall we falter 
in the conflict ; so near to paradise, shall 
we, under any trial or weariness, ever 
murmur or linger by the way ? 

" Yet a season, and we know 

Happy entrance shall be given ; 
All our sorrows left below, 

And earth exchanged for heaven." 

O Christian brethren, look up, and 
lift up your heads, for your re- 
demption draweth nigh ! Let us not be 
faint or weary by the way, for the Lord 
is at hand ! Let us not complain of any 
trial, or faint under any sorrow, when 
"at this very moment angels may be 
weaving our crowns and tuning our 
harps, when departed friends may be 
clustering round heaven's gateway to 
bid us welcome, and Jesus may be about 
to say, To-day shall thou be with me in 
paradise!' Let no one say, in tones of 



PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS. 173 

sadness, " There is but a step between 
me and death!' Rather let each one 
say, with hope and exultation, " There is 
but a step between me and paradise!' 

6 ' Soon and forever the breaking of day 

Shall chase all the night-clouds of sorrow away ; 

Soon and forever we '11 see as we're seen, 

And know the deep meaning of things that have 

been. 
Where fightings without and conflicts within 
Shall weary no more in the warfare with sin ; 
Where tears, and where fears, and where death 

shall be never, 
Christians with Christ shall be soon, and forever. ' ' 




15* 



